10-year-jail term for man who stabbed ‘noisy’ neighbour 65 times

AMMAN — The Court of Cassation has upheld an October Criminal Court ruling sentencing a 35-year-old man to 10 years in prison after convicting him of murdering his Saudi neighbour in Amman in May 2014.

The court first declared the defendant guilty of stabbing his 69-year-old neighbour to death at his home in Rabia in early May and handed him a 20-year prison term.

However, the court decided to immediately reduce the sentence to half because the victim’s family dropped the charges against the defendant. 

Court papers said the defendant lived under the victim’s apartment and often complained about him “making noise all the time”.

“The defendant and the victim would often argue about this matter and, eventually, he filed a complaint case at a court against his Saudi neighbour,” the court said, noting that the victim also filed a case against the defendant, claiming that he slandered and insulted him.

On May 2, the court papers said, “the defendant saw his neighbour [the victim] standing in front of his window and decided to kill him”.

“The defendant grabbed a kitchen knife and headed to his neighbour’s house. He stabbed him repeatedly until he made sure he was dead and left,” the court said.

The postmortem report indicated that the victim sustained 65 stab wounds to different parts of his body and that he died as a result of internal bleeding, the court documents said.

The defendant contested the Criminal Court’s ruling charging that “the ruling depending on testimonies of unreliable witnesses and that the prosecution failed to provide any solid evidence such as fingerprints to link the defendant to the murder”.

However, the higher court ruled that the Criminal Court followed the proper procedure when sentencing and the defendant deserves the verdict he received. 

The Court of Cassation judges were Mohammad Ibrahim, Naji Zubi, Yassin Abdullat, Bassim Mubeidin and Majid Azab.