In the Saman case, for the judges it is not certain that she was killed because she refused the arranged marriage

REGGIO EMILIA – It is not certain that the young woman's refusal to submit to an arranged marriage led Saman Abbas's family to kill her. The judges of the Reggio Emilia court wrote this in the 612 pages of reasons for the sentence with which, for the crime of the 18-year-old Pakistani girl which occurred during the night […]

REGGIO EMILIA – What induced Saman Abbas’s family to kill her is not certain that it was the young woman’s refusal to submit to an arranged marriage. The judges of the Reggio Emilia court wrote this in 612 pages of reasons for the sentence with which, for the crime of the 18-year-old Pakistani girl which occurred on the night between 30 April and 1 May 2021 in Novellara, the first degree sentenced her father and her mother (a fugitive) to life imprisonment and her uncle at 14 years, instead absolving the young girl’s two cousins. The rejection of the imposed marriage which would have dishonored the family, we read in the reasons, is “a narrative corresponding to that disclosed since the beginning and at the media level, having always been professed and taking the data as certain” . Well, however, the judges continue, “if there is one thing that the investigation and procedural dialectics – the only judges to do so – have allowed to clarify, it is that Saman was not killed for opposing an arranged/forced marriage”.

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This is, it is then clarified, “an element that takes nothing away and adds nothing to the gravity of the fact, but which corresponds to a truth that the Court is required to reveal”. On the other hand, “the killing of an 18-year-old girl by her own family is an event of such drama that it would not have required further artifice”. From an objective point of view, on the other hand, “there is no trace of the failure to celebrate the arranged marriage and of the dishonor connected to this circumstance, not even in the numerous wiretaps relating to the days and months following the events” . Finally “the attempts to paint Shabbar Abbas – Saman’s father – as violent and authoritarian – have all been denied”. Regarding the videos of Saman’s last night alive, filmed by the video surveillance cameras of the farm where the Abbass worked, it is recalled that Saman’s mother accompanies her daughter to a driveway and remains out of sight for about a minute.

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This “does not allow us to exclude that she was the material executor”. Moreover, the autopsy confirmed, Saman’s death was caused by the breaking of the hyoid bone, so it was not necessary to apply much force. Finally, the judges note that “the level of integration of today’s defendants in the Italian social and cultural context must be considered close to zero”.