Court slashes to half 15-year sentence of man who murdered his sister

AMMAN — The Court of Cassation decided to reduce the sentence of a 32-year-old man, who shot his married sister to death in June 2018 minutes after she exited a night club in Amman, to around seven years in prison because his offence fell within the general pardon.

The defendant, a resident of Aqaba, was originally sentenced to death by the Criminal Court in January for murdering his 27-year-old sister for reasons related to family honour in Sweifieh on June 29.

However, his sentence was immediately reduced to 15 years by the same court because the victim’s parents dropped charges against their son.

The Court of Cassation decided to also reduce the sentence to half when it reviewed the ruling in recent months because his offence fell within the category of crimes that benefited from the recent general pardon.

“Since the victim’s family dropped charges against the defendant, then he should benefit from further reduction in penalty as stipulated in the general pardon,” the higher court ruled.

Court papers said the victim was married several times and that eight months before her murder “she left her husband’s house to an unknown destination”.

“The suspect said he was fed up with her behaviour and decided to kill her the minute he found her to cleanse his family’s honour”, the court documents said.

Meanwhile, the defendant asked the victim’s husband to divorce his sister if she was captured by police, the court papers said.

“The suspect prepared a gun to kill his sister and travelled to Amman from Aqaba on several occasions to find his sister and heard from people that she frequented nightclubs in the capital,” according to the documents.

On the day of the incident, the court transcripts said, the defendant travelled again to Amman and “met with one of his brother’s who is military personnel, and went to nightclubs looking for their sister”.

“The defendant spotted two women entering a nightclub and suspected that one of them was his sister,” according to court transcripts.

The defendant waited for his sibling to leave the nightclub with her friend and “walked behind them and when he made sure that she was his sister he drew a gun and shot her in the back of the head and when she fell he shot her four times in the head and neck,” according to court documents.

“The defendant checked the victim’s pulse and after making sure she was dead he covered her body with a blanket he brought with him and waited for police to come and arrest him,” court transcripts added.

The Court of Cassation judges were Mohammad Ibrahim, Naji Zu’bi, Majid Azab, Yassin Abdullat and Nayef Samarat.