Police arrest mother for killing daughter over honour in Italy

LAHORE: A mother involved in the killing her teenage daughter in Italy has been arrested in Pakistan, Geo News quoted a police official as saying on Saturday. 

The Punjab Police spokesperson said police apprehended Nazia Shaheen from Kahrian for involvement in 18-year-old Saman Abbas’ murder with the help of her father in 2021.

According to Italian website, Oggi, the 51-year-old is awaiting extradition while in police custody in Islamabad. She was sentenced to life in prison by an Italian court for ordering murder of her daughter in 2021.

“Nazia has been residing in Pakistan since May 1, 2021 after fleeing Italy with her husband Shabbar Abbas following the murder. She was tracked down in a village by Interpol and the Pakistani police. Her husband was arrested (earlier), but she was still at large,” the publication said.

The Pakistani couple was sentenced to life in prison by an Italian court on December 19, 2023, for the murder their daughter after she refused an arranged marriage.

Saman was living in Novellara near Bologna when she disappeared in May 2021, having rejected the previous year her family's demand that she marry a cousin in Pakistan.

A tribunal in Reggio Emilia in central Italy ruled that the parents ordered the murder, and that an uncle had strangled his niece.

The uncle was sentenced to 14 years after accepting a plea bargain, while two cousins were acquitted in an affair which shocked the country.

Saman had denounced her parents to the police and social workers placed her in a shelter in November 2020.

But she visited her family in April 2021, planning to pick up her passport and start a new life with her boyfriend, whom her family disapproved of.

She disappeared soon after, and police, alerted by the boyfriend, raided the family home in May but the parents had already left for Pakistan.

The young woman was probably killed on the night of April 30 to May 1, according to surveillance camera footage showing five people leaving the family home with shovels, crowbars and buckets, before returning two and a half hours later.

A year later, Saman's body was found in an abandoned farmhouse with a broken neck.

Her brother told police that he had overheard his father talking about the murder and that it was the uncle who had killed his sister.

The father, Shabbar, was arrested in Pakistan and extradited to Italy in August 2023.

The uncle, Danish Hasnain, was turned over by French authorities while the cousins were arrested in Spain.