Man gets 20-year prison term for bludgeoning neighbour to death

AMMAN — The Court of Cassation has upheld a December Criminal Court decision sentencing a young man to 20 years in prison after convicting him of murdering his neighbour in Russeifa in January 2017.

The Criminal Court handed the 20-year-old defendant the maximum sentence after convicting him of bludgeoning to death his neighbour with a wooden stick in Hassan neighbourhood on January 23 and handed him the maximum punishment.  

Court documents said the defendant and the victim had old feuds and were neighbours.

On the day of the incident, the court maintained, the victim was in his garden when he heard the “defendant cussing him and uttering bad words”.

 The victim, a father of two children, went outside to check the matter and saw the defendant and his father standing in the street, court documents said.

“The defendant then rushed towards the victim and began banging his head with the wooden stick he was carrying,” court papers said.

 The victim was rushed to a nearby hospital and was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit where he died three days later as a result of multiple blows to his head, according to court transcripts.

The Criminal Court’s attorney general had asked the higher court to uphold the sentence against the defendant, stating that the court abided by the proper legal procedures when sentencing the defendant.

The defendant contested the court ruling arguing that he “did not intend to kill the victim and that his charge should be amended to beating to death, which carries a lesser prison sentence”.

However, the Cassation Court ruled that the Criminal Court’s judgement fell within the law, that the proceedings were proper and that the sentence given was satisfactory.

“The defendant’s actions of hitting the victim on the head with a blunt object are a clear indication that his intention was to kill him,” the higher court ruled.

The Cassation Court tribunal comprised judges Mohammad Ibrahim, Yassin Abdullat, Bassem Mubeidn, Naji Zu’bi and Majid Azab.