Father charged with premeditated murder of his two young daughters

AMMAN — The Criminal Court prosecutor on Tuesday charged a 49-year-old father with two counts of premeditated murder, in connection with the alleged murder of his two daughters in Ramtha District over a span of 10 days, senior official sources said.

The two victims, aged 12 and nine, were allegedly murdered by their father while at his home, Police Spokesperson Lt. Col. Amer Sartawi said.

“The victims’ mother, who is divorced from the suspect, filed a complaint at a police station in recent days that her children were in grave danger with their father because he was constantly abusing them physically,” the police official told The Jordan Times.

The mother, an Arab national, told investigators “that her former husband asked to see his four children and that he took them to his house for a while,” according to Sartawi.

The mother said that she feared for her children’s safety “because she learned from one of her children that their father was very abusive and would constantly beat them up,” he added.

When investigators went to check on the well-being of the children, they “found only two of the four children,” according to the police official.

“We questioned the two children, a boy aged 10 and a girl aged eight, and they informed us that their father would constantly beat them up,” the official source maintained.

The children also stated that their father “murdered their two siblings and buried them around the house and that they feared for their lives,” a senior judicial source told The Jordan Times.

The father was then brought to the police station for questioning, where he reportedly “confessed to murdering his two daughters over a 10-day span,” according to the senior judicial source.

“The suspect claimed in his initial confession that he was suffering from financial problems and mental issues,” the senior judicial source said.

However, the judicial source also maintained that “investigators do not believe that the suspect was suffering from any mental issues”, and also that “there is no evidence to indicate that the suspect was suffering from any mental issues”. 

The father also confessed to “beating up the two daughters with a blunt object and burying the first one in a shallow grave, while dumping the body of his second daughter in a cesspool in the backyard of the house,” according to the senior judicial source.

The suspect was detained at a correctional and rehabilitation centre for 15 days, pending further investigations into the incident, the senior official source said.

“The Criminal Court prosecutor will summon family members and continue to question the father to learn more about this gruesome murder,” the senior judicial source added.