Criminal Court sentences youth to death over ‘honour killing’

AMMAN — The Criminal Court on Tuesday sentenced a 22-year-old man to death after convicting him of murdering his divorced sister and another man for reasons related to family honour in Amman in October 2016.

The court also decided to sentence the 58-year-old father of the victim to 20 years in prison for complicity in premeditated murder.

The female victim, aged 27, and a 17-year-old man were both stabbed to death with a switchblade near an apartment building in Jubeiha, in mid-October.

Court documents said the victim would often leave her family’s home without her family’s permission and go missing for a while.

Few days before the murder, according to the court documents, the defendants learned of the victim’s whereabouts and that “she was staying in an apartment in Jubeiha with a strange man”.

The transcripts said that the two defendants monitored the victim’s movement and on the day of the murder “they met her at the entrance of the building and the minute the defendant saw his sister he pulled out a switchblade and stabbed her repeatedly”.

The father blocked the second victim from intervening and “held him until his son finished stabbing his sibling”, according to court transcripts.

“After the brother made sure his sister was dead, he headed towards the man and stabbed him repeatedly until he made sure he was dead too, then headed to a police station to turn himself in claiming to have killed the pair to cleanse his family’s honour,” the court documents added.

Tuesday’s verdicts will automatically be reviewed by the Court of Cassation within the next 30 days.