An Italian appeals court Friday upheld life sentences for a Pakistani couple convicted of murdering their 18-year-old daughter in a so-called honor killing after she refused an arranged marriage. The case shocked many Ital ians and became a symbol of the brutal mistreatment of immigrant women who rebel against inflexible family rules.
The appeals court in the northern city of Bologna said that Saman Abbas, whose body was found at a farmhouse in 2022, 18 months after she disappeared, was killed with the participation of the whole family.
The court upheld a life sentence for both the teenager’s father, Shabbir Abbas, and her mother, Nazia Shaheen. It also sentenced to life in prison two cousins who had been previously cleared by a lower court.
Saman’s uncle, Danish Hasnain, was also sentenced to 22 years in prison for his involvement in the murder. He had been previously given a 14-year sentence.
The court case, in Reggio Emilia in northern Italy, became t he most high-profile of several criminal investigations in Italy in recent years dealing with the slaying or mistreatment of immigrant women or girls who rebelled against their family ‘s insistence that they marry someone chosen for them.
So-called honor killings are common in Pakistan, where family members and relatives sometimes kill women who don’t follow local traditions and culture or decide to marry someone of their own choice.
Saman Abbas’ body was dug up in November 2022 in an abandoned farmhouse near the fields where her father worked in northern Italy. Italian prosecutors contend the woman was murdered by her family on May 1, 2021. A few days later, her parents flew from Milan to Pakistan.
Saman Abbas’ father was later arrested in Pakistan and extradited to Italy for prosecution. Her mother was convicted in absentia but was arrested in May last year after three years on the run.
Abbas’ uncle, two cousins, her father and her mother went on trial first in February 2023. All the defendants have denied wrongdoing.
Saman Abbas had emigrated as a teenager from Pakistan to the farm town of Novellara in Italy’s northern region of Emilia-Romagna. She quickly embraced Western ways, including shedding her headscarf and dating a young man of her choice. In one social media post, she and her Pakistani boyfriend were shown kissing on a street in the regional capital, Bologna.
According to Italian investigators, that kiss enraged Abbas’ parents, who wanted her to marry a cousin in Pakistan.
The young woman was last seen alive on April 30, 2021 a few hundred meters (yards) away from where her body was discovered in surveillance camera video as she walked with her parents on the watermelon farm where her father worked.
Abbas had reportedly told her boyfriend that she feared for her life because of her refusal to marry an older man in her homeland.
An autopsy revealed a broken neck bone, possibly caused by strangulation.
In 2019, Italy made coercing an Italian citizen or resident into marriage, even abroad, a crime covered under domestic violence laws.
Following Abbas’ disappearance, Italy’s union of Islamic communities issued a religious ruling rejecting forced marriages.
