«Saman? It cannot be ruled out that it was her mother who killed her.” The judges do not hide the possibility of direct involvement of Saman Abbas’ mother, on the murder of the 18-year-old resident of Novellara di Reggio Emilia, killed in the night between 30 April and 1 May 2021 in the Bassa country. Exactly three years later, the Court of Assizes of Reggio Emilia filed the reasons for the sentence which led last December to the life imprisonment of the father and mother of the young girl of Pakistani origin, Abbas Shabbar and Shaheen Nazia, and her uncle Danish Hasnain to 16 years of imprisonment.
The motive
The 600 pages of reasons drawn up by the Court, chaired by Cristina Beretti and with Michela Caputo as drafter, reveal many details that are still unclear. For the judges, the motive for the crime was not the refusal of the arranged marriage with a young man resident in Pakistan, as it seemed for a long time, as much as the fear of a new, and practically certain, escape of Saman, after the one that had already occurred previously. To avoid another act of disobedience, the judges explain, the parents chose to murder their daughter, and the perpetrator may have been the mother. All aspects brought to light by the investigations and in particular by listening to the long phone calls between relatives. The 18-year-old’s relationship with her boyfriend Saqib and her desire to leave home had scared the family. And the imminent trip to Pakistan that the two young people had planned, leaving the next morning, pushed the adults towards murder if their daughter did not agree to change her plans. All in agreement with the uncle, ready to intervene if the girl was not convinced. His parents signaled him that they were leaving the house, just before midnight, with a ring on the phone, to keep him alert.
Video recordings
The dialogue with Saman was not successful, we read in the reasons for the sentence, and to remove any possibility of escape and other acts of “indiscipline”, Abbas Shabbar and Shaheen Nazia preferred to kill their daughter. «If there is one thing that the investigation and the procedural dialectics – the only ones to do so – have allowed us to clarify, it is that Saman Abbas she was not killed for opposing an arranged/forced marriage”, the Court specified. An aspect which, however, the judges continue, “does not detract from or add anything to the seriousness of the fact, but which corresponds to a truth that the Court is required to highlight”. The parents’ determination to stop their daughter, with any solution, is clear: the defendants, we read in the reasons, they “literally accompanied their daughter to die”. Furthermore, another aspect that stands out forcefully, the Court of Assizes does not exclude that it was the mother who physically killed the 18 year old, making concrete a decision taken by the two spouses during the confrontation with their uncle, Danish Hasnain. The hypothesis is made credible by the video recordings contained in the security cameras installed in the Novellara farmhouse, systems which recorded what were probably the last moments of Saman’s life. The judges underline this “disheartening certainty” and explain: «The common intention of the accused to commit the murder of their own daughter can be said to be circumstantially ascertained, the presence of both at the crime scene, and the proven contribution made to the realization of the event”. And the videos in which the mother stops her husband with a sharp gesture and walks into the darkness of the road with her daughter lead us to believe that she, Shaheen Nazia, wanted to take direct responsibility for her. What was seen “for that minute which does not allow us to exclude that she was the material executor” while the husband «shows himself tormented, assuming attitudes that account for the drama of what is happening, but which he remains to observe, without doing anything.” An inertia which for the judges reaffirms “his full psychological adherence to the fact”.
The role of the brother
Not even Saman’s brother escapes the harsh words of the Assize Court, not registered in the register of suspects by the Juvenile Court of Bologna. This is clarified by the lines in which it is explained why the boy was denied the compensation he requested and indeed it is underlined that he too is not exempt from responsibility. The Court of Review, the Court of Assizes points out, «has effectively highlighted how the narrations of Ali Haider, who have seen the alternation of contradictions and progressive revelations, reveal the internal tension between the defense of the two parents, loved by him, and the desire to redeem his sins towards his sister, consisting in having fueled the last and decisive quarrel between the three”. For the Court, there are many «elements indicating his involvement and his direct responsibilities in the events that led to the killing of his sister.”
