Crime lab tests to determine whether murder victim was alive when set ablaze

AMMAN — Government pathologists on Sunday said they will have to wait for crime lab results to determine whether a 25-year-old divorced woman, who was  reportedly murdered and burnt by her brother over the weekend, was alive when she was set ablaze.

The victim, a mother of four children from two marriages, was struck on the head with a shovel and then set ablaze, allegedly by her 40-year-old brother at their home in Irbid Governorate late Friday night.

The suspect told investigators that he waited until he made sure his sister was dead and her body was completely burnt before surrendering to authorities, claiming family honour as his motive, official sources said, quoting initial questioning of the suspect by investigators.

“We have sent blood and tissue samples to the crime lab to determine the percentage of carboxyhaemoglobin. If it exceeds 10 per cent, then the woman was alive when she was set ablaze,” a senior official source told The Jordan Times.

It will take around a month for the crime lab to return the results to the Irbid National Institute of Forensic Medicine (INIFM) to help them determine the cause of death, according to the official source.

The autopsy, performed by Ali Shotar and a team of INIFM pathologists, also revealed that the victim received a heavy blow to the head that fractured her skull and caused internal bleeding, the source told The Jordan Times.

Criminal Court Prosecutor General Qahtan Qawaqzeh on Saturday charged the suspect, a bus driver, with premeditated murder in connection with the death and burning of his divorced sister.

In his initial testimony to Qawaqzeh the suspect claimed that his sister “brought the family disgrace because she got divorced twice over allegedly illicit behaviour and was known in their village for her bad behaviour”, according to judicial sources.

The suspect reportedly told the prosecutor “that he found no other solution but to kill his sister to cleanse his family’s honour and stop people from talking about his reputation and that of his family”, the sources maintained.