Life sentence upheld for two domestic helpers who killed employer

AMMAN — The Court of Cassation has upheld a Criminal Court ruling sentencing two Sri Lankan domestic helpers to life in prison for murdering and robbing a 50-year-old woman in Fuheis in 2013.

The two defendants were convicted of choking the woman, identified as Sally E., to death with her bathrobe belt at her home on July 24, 2013, and stealing her jewellery. 

The court said one of the defendants worked as a domestic helper for the woman on Wednesdays and saw a safe full of jewellery and gold, so she told her friend about it and they planned to rob the woman.

On the day of the incident, the court maintained, the domestic worker helped her friend sneak into the house without the knowledge of the owner. 

The owner had to leave, so the defendants waited for her to return in order to take the safe key from her to steal her valuables.

While the victim was away, court transcripts said, several workers came to her house to fix the water cooler and the defendants told them that the owner was not home.

The workers waited in the yard, but one of them had to go to the Khalda area to buy a tool to fix the cooler, according to the court papers.

The woman came back to her house and was attacked by the two defendants, who “overpowered her and choked her with her own bathrobe rope”, the court papers said.

“The two defendants managed to open the safe, emptied its contents in several bags and left the house quickly, passing by the workers who were sitting on the house’s stairs waiting for their colleague,” the court added.

Meanwhile, the workers called the colleague who went to buy the tool and told him that the owner of the house had returned, but when they tried to reach her, she would not answer the door or her phone, the court verdict said.

“The workers called the police and informed them that two domestic helpers had left the house in a hurry with some bags and were acting in a suspicious manner,” the court said.

The Criminal Court decided to amend the premeditated murder charges to manslaughter “because the two defendants did not plot to murder the victim”.

The attorney general appealed the verdict, demanding capital punishment for both suspects and “arguing that the two women had planned to murder the victim five hours before she came home”.

However, the Cassation Court rejected the attorney general's argument, ruling that the Criminal Court’s verdict was correct.

The Cassation Court comprised judges Mahmoud Ababneh, Basel Abu Anzeh, Yassin Abdullat, Mohammad Tarawneh and Hussein Sakaran.