The life sentences for Saman Abbas’s parents, Shabbar Abbas and Nazia Shaheen, and for cousins Ijaz Ikram and Noman Ul Haq, become final, as does the 22-year prison sentence imposed on uncle Danish Hasnain. The decision came after the Court of Cassation rejected the appeals of the defendants for the murder of the 18-year-old Pakistani girl killed in Novellara, in the Reggio Emilia area, in the spring of 2021. According to the prosecution, the young woman was murdered for opposing an arranged marriage and for adopting a lifestyle considered incompatible with family traditions.
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The case
Saman Abbas was considered “guilty,” in the eyes of her relatives, of refusing an arranged marriage and choosing to love whoever she wanted, preferring jeans over the veil and selfies with lipstick over the strict traditions of Punjab.
Last month, during the prosecution’s closing arguments, Attorney General Marco Dall’Olio, requesting confirmation of the second-instance sentences, said: “Saman had to be punished: this is a fixed point of the entire trial. The intention was to teach her a lesson. The crime was organized in the smallest details, a collective and premeditated act. A chilling story. The murder, although rooted in its own cultural background, betrays the use of extreme and disproportionate violence that reveals the vile and ignoble nature of the motive.”
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Saman Abbas was killed on the evening of April 30, 2021. Her five relatives, found one after another over three years between Europe and Pakistan and brought back to Italy, have been the only suspects from the start for that crime. On the evening of her death, Saman had returned to Novellara just a few days earlier after a period spent in Bologna in a protected community. Her intention was reportedly to get her documents and leave to live her life with her boyfriend, a relationship her family did not accept.
Confirmation of the appeal sentence
The confirmation of the appeal sentence for the case of Saman Abbas, established this morning by the Court of Cassation, marks the closure of a story of pain. The remains of the girl’s lifeless body were found in November 2022. The corpse was under a ruin, just a few dozen meters from the house.
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