Court upholds 20-year sentence for honour killing

AMMAN — The Court of Cassation upheld a March Criminal Court ruling, sentencing a 27-year-old man to 20 years in prison after convicting him of murdering his younger sister for reasons related to family honour in Mafraq in July of 2016.

The court declared the defendant guilty of the premeditated murder of his 24-year-old sister by stabbing her multiple times on July 23 and handed him the death penalty.

However, the court decided to reduce the sentence to 20 years because the victim’s father and mother dropped charges against their son. 

Court documents said the victim “was constantly leaving her family’s home to unknown destinations and that the last time she left she was away for almost three years”.

On the day of the murder, the court maintained, the victim decided to return home.

“The defendant decided to kill his sister for reasons related to family honour and took her to the balcony of her house where he stabbed her 10 times in different areas of her body with a switchblade,” the court documents stated.

The defendant fled the scene and went to his other sister’s house and “drank tea with her and her family and told her to raise her head high because he [had] cleansed the family’s honour by killing his sister”, the court documents said.

The victim was rushed to a nearby hospital where she was declared dead on arrival, according to court papers.

The defendant contested the Criminal Court’s ruling charging that he had “killed his sister in a moment of rage because she would constantly leave the house and [he] did not plot the murder”.

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 defendant had informed the Criminal Court prosecutor that he was looking for his sister and was planning to murder her the minute he found her, to cleanse the disgrace and shame she brought to their family,” the Court of Cassation said.

The higher court added that the fact that “the defendant confessed he was constantly looking for his sister [in order to] murder her was an indication that he had plotted... and his actions were not spontaneous”.

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