Court maintains death sentence in Aqaba murder case

AMMAN — The Court of Cassation upheld a September Criminal Court ruling, sentencing a 38-year-old man to death after convicting him of murdering a man in Aqaba in November 2015.

The court declared the defendant guilty of premeditated murder and stabbing a victim to death on November 27.

Court documents said the defendant was friends with a woman whose daughter was “harassed by the victim a few weeks before the incident”.

“The victim possessed photos of the woman on his mobile without her headscarf, and threatened to expose her and send her photos to her father if she did not marry him,” court documents said.

A few days before the murder, the mother of the woman contacted the defendant asking for his help “to erase the photos of her daughter from the victim’s mobile”.

The defendant agreed and asked for a photo of the victim and his address, the court documents added.

The defendant watched the victim’s house until he finally “got to him and when he asked him to give him his mobile, or to erase the photos of the woman, he refused, so he stabbed him 12 times”, according to court papers.

“The defendant also banged the victim’s head on the ground repeatedly to ensure he was dead, took a photo of him and left the apartment after washing his hands of the blood,” the court documents added.

The defendant returned to his house and changed his clothes, then called the woman and informed her “that he had killed the victim and retrieved his mobile”, the court documents stated.

The defendant contested the Criminal Court’s ruling charging that he “did not plot the murder and that the killing occurred following a heated argument”.

However, the Court of Cassation rejected his claims and ruled that the Criminal Court’s ruling was accurate and the defendant deserved the sentence he received.

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