Saman murder case: sentences for family members are final

The life sentences handed down to Saman Abbas’s parents, Shabbar Abbas and Nazia Shaheen, and to her cousins Ijaz Ikram and Noman Ul Haq, have become final; the 22-year prison sentence imposed on her uncle, Danish Hasnain, is also final. The decision came after the Court of Cassation rejected the appeals lodged by the defendants in the murder case of the 18-year-old Pakistani woman killed in Novellara, in the province of Reggio Emilia, in the spring of 2021. According to the prosecution, the young woman was murdered for opposing an arranged marriage and for adopting a lifestyle deemed incompatible with family traditions.

In the eyes of her relatives, Saman Abbas had been deemed “guilty” of refusing an arranged marriage and choosing to love whomever she wanted, preferring jeans to a headscarf and selfies in lipstick to the strict traditions of the Punjab.

Last month, during his closing speech, Attorney General Marco Dall’Olio, in calling for the second-instance convictions to be upheld, had said: “Saman had to be punished: this is the central tenet of the entire trial. The intention was to teach her a lesson. The crime was organised down to the smallest detail; it was a concerted and premeditated act. A chilling affair. The murder, whilst having its own cultural roots, betrays the use of extreme and disproportionate violence that reveals the vile and despicable nature of the motive.”

Saman Abbas was murdered on the evening of 30 April 2021. Her five relatives, who were tracked down one by one over a period of three years across Europe and Pakistan and brought back to Italia, were immediately identified as the sole suspects in the murder. On the evening of her death, Saman had returned to Novellara just a few days earlier after spending some time in Bologna in a supported living facility. Her intention was reportedly to collect her documents and leave to start a new life with her boyfriend, a relationship her family did not approve of.

The confirmation of the appeal judgement in the Saman Abbas case, handed down this morning by the Court of Cassation, marks the end of a tragic story. The girl’s remains were found in November 2022. The body was lying beneath a derelict building, a few dozen metres from her home.