Last Updated on: 12th July 2023, 11:37 am
Saman Abbas’ Father, Shabbar Abbas, Was Arrested For Honor Killing
Authorities say a Pakistani father has been arrested in connection with the alleged honor killing of his 18-year-old daughter in Italy after she refused an arranged marriage.
According to senior police official Anwar Saeed Kingra, Shabbir Abbas was arrested at his village in the eastern Punjab province last week after a tip-off from Italian officials and local police.
Saman Abbas, the suspect’s daughter, was last seen by neighbors outside her family’s residence in the rural parish of Novellara, near the town of Reggio Emilia, in late April.
Days later, Saman’s parents, who allegedly pressured her into marrying a man she had never met, were seen on video from Milan airport boarding a flight bound for Pakistan.
A few days before Abbas’ arrest, a body was found in a shallow burial in an abandoned building near the Pakistani family’s home.
It could take two months to identify the remains, according to Italian media. However, a local judge said Thursday it was “very likely” that the body belonged to the missing teenager.
According to Amir Shaheen, another senior investigator with the Pakistani police, Italian police are looking for Saman’s father on suspicion of murdering his daughter.
He declined to provide any further information, saying the suspect is being held by the country’s federal investigative agency, which Interpol had contacted to seek the man’s arrest and extradition to Italy in connection with the woman’s death.
The 18-year-old informed her Italian boyfriend, also of Pakistani origin, before she disappeared that her parents intended for her to marry an older man from her country, but she declined.
After contacting the authorities, Saman was given permission to stay in government-protected accommodation. He then returned home, apparently after receiving text messages from his family asking him to come back, Italian news sources reported at the time.
After being extradited from France and Spain, the teenager’s two cousins, Ikram Ijaz and Nomanhulaq Nomanhulaq, and Saman’s uncle, Danish Hasnain, who is suspected of strangling her, have already been arrested in Italy.
Italian prosecutors believe Saman’s parents, uncles, and two cousins were involved in both his murder and the destruction of his body.
On 29th April a day before police believed Saman was killed, three of the suspects were seen on surveillance footage with shovels, a crowbar, and a hammer.
Saman was filmed leaving her house with her parents for the last time the next day.
Nazia Shaheen, the girl’s mother, is yet to be arrested and remains at large in Pakistan after being charged in absentia.
Hundreds of women are murdered each year in so-called honor killings, committed by husbands or family members in retaliation for alleged adultery or other sexual misconduct.