Court upholds 15-year sentence in honour killing case

AMMAN — The Cassation Court has upheld a September Criminal Court ruling sentencing a taxi driver to 15 years in prison after convicting him of murdering and setting his married sister ablaze for reasons related to family honour in Irbid. 

The Criminal Court declared the defendant, 46, guilty of bludgeoning his 28-year-old sister to death, and then setting her body ablaze on October 30, 2015 and handed him the death penalty.

However, the court decided to reduce the sentence to 15 years in prison after the victim’s family and husband decided to drop charges against the defendant.

Court papers said the victim had divorced several times and then remarried, but ran away from her husband’s home so he “decided to kill her to cleanse his family’s honour”.

Two months before the incident, the court maintained, the defendant bought a flammable substance and a blunt object, “and kept it at his home waiting for his sister to be found to kill her”.

On the day of the murder, the court added, the defendant learned that his sister went to see one of his brothers in Zarqa, so he left Irbid and went to Zarqa to get her.

Once they reached the defendant’s home, the court documents said, he tied his sister up and “beat her with a blunt object on her head repeatedly until she died”.

“The defendant then placed the victim in a vehicle, poured a flammable substance on her body and set her ablaze,” according to court documents.

The court papers added that the “defendant stood for a while watching his sister’s body burn, then informed his other siblings that he murdered her and they took him to a nearby police station”.

The defendant had contested the court’s ruling through his lawyer, asking to be acquitted for reasons of insanity, the court documents said.

 However, the higher court disregarded his argument and concluded that the Criminal Court proceedings were accurate and correct, and that the defendant received the appropriate punishment.

“The defendant had prepared the murder weapon two months before the incident and drove her back from Zarqa to Irbid. These actions do not qualify [him] as being insane,” the higher court ruled.

The court comprised former judges Mohammad Ibrahim, Yassin Abdullat, Nayef Samarat, Naji Zu’bi and Bassem Mubeidin.