“If there is one thing that the investigation and the procedural dialectics – the only ones to do so – have made it possible to clarify, it is that Saman Abbas was not killed for opposing an arranged/forced marriage.” For the Court of Assizes of Reggio Emilia, in the motivation of the sentence on the murder of the 18-year-old, on the night between 30 April and 1 May 2021 in Novellara, this “is 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 highlight.” In December the Court sentenced the father and mother to life imprisonment and the uncle to 16 years.
Saman, private funerals at the Novellara cemetery. The words of the brother on the stele: «Strong and courageous sister»
«It is not excluded that she was killed by her mother»
«The defendants Abbas Shabbar and Shaheen Nazia» «literally accompanied their daughter to die» and it «is not excluded that» the mother was «the material executor».
This is what we read in the over 600 pages of the reasons for the sentence of the Court of Assizes of Reggio Emilia which motivates the responsibilities of the father and mother of Saman Abbas, the murdered Pakistani woman, both sentenced to life imprisonment. The judges also sentenced the uncle to 16 years.
Agreed decision
The decision to kill Saman Abbas was apparently agreed upon by the parents during telephone calls with his uncle Danish Hasnain and this is demonstrated by the conduct of the two when leaving the house with their daughter, documented by the cameras on the night of 30 April 2021. « First of all, the fact that – it can be stated with disheartening certainty – the accused Abbas Shabbar and Shaheen Nazia literally accompanied their daughter to her death.” “The common intention of the defendants to commit the murder of their own daughter, the presence of both at the scene of the crime, and the proven contribution made to the realization of the event can be said to be circumstantially ascertained.” For the judges (president Cristina Beretti, drafter Michela Caputo) the movements and demeanor of the two, filmed by the cameras of the Novellara farmhouse, on the night of 30 April 2021, are “eloquent and expressive”. The mother, in a firm and determined way, blocking her husband with a resolute gesture, she enters the carriageway with Saman – “for that minute which does not allow us to exclude that she was the material executor”. The husband, who “shows himself tormented, assuming attitudes that account for the drama of what is happening, but which he remains to observe, without doing anything”. Thus confirming “his full psychological adherence to the fact”.
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