Reduced jail term upheld for child murderer after mother drops charges

AMMAN — The Court of Cassation has upheld an April Criminal Court ruling sentencing a 35-year-old driving instructor to 10 years in prison after convicting him of murdering a child at a brothel in February 2016.

The court declared the defendant guilty of beating to death of a four-year-old child in early 2016 and handed him a 20-year prison sentence.

However, the court decided to immediately reduce the sentence to 10 years because the victim’s mother dropped charges against the defendant.

Court documents said the defendant was running a brothel in Amman and the victim and her mother were staying with him.

On the day of the incident, court documents maintained, the defendant was smoking hashish and the victim saw him so he became enraged.

The man grabbed the victim from a room where she had been  sleeping and “started beating her up with a water hose then banged her head on the walls of the brothel”.

“The victim’s mother and another woman that was present at the time of the incident attempted to stop him but he pushed them away and continued beating the child until she passed out and later died,” according to court transcripts.

The convict then took the child to a deserted area and buried her and informed her mother that “he sent the child to an orphanage since her father was unknown,” the court maintained.

But the matter was exposed when the woman who was present when the incident occurred decided to tell police what happened two months later and the defendant was arrested.

The defendant “ushered authorities to where he buried the child,” the case documents said.

The Criminal Court prosecutor appealed the verdict asking the higher court to sentence him to 20 years since “the child was very young and victim’s mother should not be allowed to drop charges because she neglected her child and allowed the defendant, who was a pimp, to murder her daughter”.

“The victim’s mother gave up her child’s rights when she was alive, so we do not allow her to give her child’s rights when she is dead,” the Criminal Court prosecutor argued.

However, the Court of Cassation ruled that the Criminal Court’s ruling was in line with the relevant law and with related procedures and the punishment was just.

The Court of Cassation was comprised of judges Mohammad Ibrahim, Yassin Abdullat, Saeed Mugheid, Bassem Mubeidin and Naji Zu’bi.