Man sentenced to death for killing sister in name of ‘family honour’

AMMAN — The Court of Cassation upheld a June Criminal Court ruling, sentencing a man to death after convicting him of murdering his married sister in the Jordan Valley in October 2019.

The court declared the defendant guilty of the premeditated murder of his married sister while at her home on October 30 and handed him the death penalty.

Court documents said the defendant knew that “his sister was seeing other men while being married and that she had a bad reputation”.

The defendant decided to murder his sister “to cleanse his family’s honour”, according to court papers.

On one occasion two years before the incident, the defendant saw his sister “riding with a man in a bus and attempted to kill her but failed", court papers said.

On the day of the incident, the court maintained that the defendant headed to the victim’s home and cut off the electricity so that she would leave the house to check out the matter, but she did not.

The defendant then waited for two hours next to her window to spy on her, and then knocked on the door, court papers said.

The minute he saw his sister, the court added, the defendant fired four rounds striking her in the back, the court transcripts added.

The defendant, through his lawyer, contested the capital punishment verdict, arguing that his client should benefit from a reduction in penalty because he killed his sister “in a moment of rage to cleanse his family’s honour”.

Meanwhile, the Criminal Court’s attorney general had asked the higher court to uphold the death sentence ruling, stating that the court abided by the proper legal procedures when sentencing the defendant.

The Cassation Court ruled that the Criminal Court’s judgement fell within the law; that the proceedings were proper and the sentence given was satisfactory.

"The defendant plotted his murder carefully and had prior knowledge about his sister’s bad behaviour and a fit of fury clause is not applicable in this case," the higher court ruled.

The Cassation Court judges were Mohammad Ibrahim, Yassin Abdullat, Nayef Samarat, Hammad Ghzawi and Qassem Dughmi.