A Pakistani mother and father have been sentenced by an Italian court to life in prison for killing their 18-year-old daughter because she refused an arranged marriage.
Saman Abbas’s body was found beneath a farmhouse in northern Italy in November 2022, 18 months after she disappeared.
According to the BBC, her father, Shabbar Abbas, was arrested in Pakistan in August and extradited to be tried for her murder. His wife, Nazia Shaheen, was sentenced in her absence. She is believed to be in hiding in Pakistan.
The pair were sentenced by a court in the northern city of Reggio Emilia.
The BBC reports that after her disappearance, the country’s union of Islamic communities issued a fatwa – a religious ruling – rejecting forced marriages.
Human rights groups say the most common reasons for ‘honour killings’ are when the victims refuse to enter into an arranged marriage or have been raped or sexually assaulted.
But killings can be carried out for more trivial reasons, like dressing in a way deemed inappropriate or displaying behaviour seen as disobedient.
In Pakistan, hundreds of women are killed in this way each year. A much smaller number of men are also murdered in such cases.
[Image: A 2011 protest in Istanbul against honour killings https://www.flickr.com/photos/cagrimmett/5865504716]