Cassation

Saman Abbas, the Supreme Court says no to house arrest for cousins

They remain in prison due to the risk of absconding and re-offending against women who do not respect the rules of a patriarchal culture

by Patrizia Maciocchi

5 January 2026

4' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

Key points

The Escape and Arrest
Dangerousness Judgement
Patriarchal culture

4' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

The cousins of Saman Abbas, who were sentenced to life imprisonment by the Court of Appeal for murder and suppression of a corpse, in conspiracy with the uncle and parents of the young victim, remain in prison. The Court of Cassation rejected the appeal against the decision of the Court of Review of Bologna to deny the house arrest to the two defendants. At the basis of the no the risk of flight, as well as of reiteration of the crime, especially against family women who do not respect the rules of a patriarchal culture, from which they have never distanced themselves.

The 38-year-old Nomanhulaq Nomanhulaq and 32-year-old Ikram Ijaz had been arrested last May, after being sentenced to life imprisonment on appeal for the murder of his cousin Saman Abbas, the 18-year-old Pakistani girl killed by her own family on the night of 30 April to 1 May 2021 in the countryside of Novellara, in the Bassa Reggiana, where she lived.

The two had been acquitted in the first-degree trial in Reggio Emilia with a sentence of 19 December 2023 that had released them immediately. A verdict overturned, however, by the Court of Appeal of Bologna on 18 April. Life imprisonment for them, as had been confirmed for their parents Shabbar Abbas and Nazia Shaheen, as well as an increase in sentence from 14 to 22 years for their uncle Danish Hasnain.

The Escape and Arrest

Ijaz was the first fugitive of the five convicts to be arrested after the girl's disappearance. On 31 May 2021, one month after the murder, he was captured in France and extradited the following 10 June. Nomanhulaq, on the other hand, was arrested on 14 February 2022 in Spain, where he was fleeing on board a Flixbus that had left France where he had also taken refuge, only to be extradited to Italy on 22 March.

According to the accusations, what nailed them to their co-responsibility for the death of Saman - killed for opposing an arranged marriage with a cousin in her homeland, for wanting to live western-style and for getting engaged to another boy disliked by the family - was the famousfilm showing them two days before the murder with shovels in their hands behind the farm in Novellara where the Abbas family worked, presumably used to dig and prepare the grave where they would later bury Saman. Whose body was found - on the instructions of her uncle Danish (believed to be the material perpetrator of the crime, but who, thanks to his cooperation, obtained a discount of sentence, avoiding life imprisonment) on 27 November 2022, hidden underground in an abandoned farmhouse only a hundred steps away from the house where she lived with her parents.

Pointing the finger at all five family members had been Alì Haider, Saman's younger brother, the big witness at the trial in which he recounted the family's barbaric plan to kill her. The defence lawyers said they were 'bewildered' at the reading of the second instance verdict. For the Supreme Court, there is a real risk of repeating the escape in view of the final verdict of the Cassation Court, which could, if their lawyers' appeal is rejected, confirm the life sentence.

The judgement of dangerousness

In the Supreme Court's view, the review court's assessment of the absence of elements from which to deduce a mitigation of the finding of dangerousness is also logical. The defence pointed out that the two applicants had so far behaved regularly and without criminal violations. An element that, for the judges, does not prove a departure from the logic behind the crime they are accused of.

Patriarchal culture

The danger of re-offence is logically and non-contradictorily motivated. The two defendants 'were found guilty of having committed a murder to the detriment of one of their relatives,' reads the sentence, 'towards whom they had no reason for conflict, which according to the reconstruction of the first instance judges, by which the victim's parents were convicted, was determined by a cultural heritage assessed as an abject or futile motive'. And the fact that the grounds for the conviction have not yet been filed does not render the reconstruction conjectural, as argued in the appeal, 'because the operative part of the judgment of appeal does not contemplate the exclusion of the aggravating circumstances complained of, which were, therefore, found to exist'.

For the Court of Cassation, the absence of conduct or statements that make evident the abandonment of a patriarchal cultural heritage, the repudiation of a logic that provides for the right to react with violence to the failure to respect family rules and traditions, is also of importance. Hence the possibility 'of reiteration of the criminal conduct to the detriment of other family members, especially ofthe female sex, upon the occurrence of situations of non-compliance with the aforementioned rules'.