Man charged with premeditated murder

AMMAN — The Criminal Court prosecutor charged a man over the weekend with premeditated murder in connection with the death of a man who was reported missing last week in Irbid, senior official sources said.

The victim, who was reported missing by his family in early August, was found dead in a forest area in Irbid on August 8, police spokesperson Lt. Col. Amer Sartawi said.

The victim’s body was transferred to the National Institute of Forensic Medicine (NIFM) for an autopsy and forensic experts confirmed that “the man was murdered”, Sartawi told The Jordan Times.

“The forensic experts concluded that the victim died from multiple blows to different parts of his body that were caused by a blunt object,” the police official said.

Sartawi added that a special police taskforce was immediately formed to investigate the homicide.

“Police zeroed in on a man who knew the victim and was one of the last people to contact him,” a senior judicial source said.

Upon summoning the suspect, the judicial source maintained, he reportedly confessed to murdering the victim over old feuds, the senior judicial source told The Jordan Times.

In his initial testimony, the suspect told investigators that he lured the victim “to a deserted area where he beat him up with an iron bar until he made sure he was dead”, according to the senior judicial source.

Sartawi added that police retrieved an iron bar based on the defendant’s confessions and sent it to the “criminal lab for further analysis and for evidence collection”.

The Criminal Court prosecutor is expected to summon members of the suspect and the victim’s family for questioning about the “nature of the feuds that lead to the murder,” the senior judicial source said.

 The suspect was ordered detained by the Criminal Court prosecutor at a correctional and rehabilitation centre for 15 days pending further questioning and indictment, according to the senior judicial source.