The Supreme Court, 'Saman killed by the clan because she wanted a different life'

The murder of Saman Abbas "was not the result of a decision made on the night of the crime, but the execution of a criminal plan developed previously and shared within the entire family unit, without the time that had passed being able to act as an adequate counter-force". It cannot therefore be considered an impulsive act, or in any case an extemporaneous one, "as erroneously believed" at first instance, but "a premeditated decision to sanction the dishonor caused by the girl, who intended to live according to social standards different from those of origin". The Court of Cassation states this, in a passage of the hundred pages with which the procedural story on the murder of the 18-year-old who disappeared in the night between 30 April and 1 May 2021 from Novellara and was found buried under three meters of earth near her home, a year and a half later, ends.

In addition to confirming the premeditation, speaking of a decisive elimination from the Pakistani family clan, the sentence that motivates the final life sentences for the girl's parents Shabbar Abbas and Nazia Shaheen and for the cousins Ijaz Ikram and Noman Ul Haq and the 22 years inflicted on her uncle, Danish Hasnain, the Supreme Court also affirms another principle: "Inviolable rights, such as life, cannot be sacrificed to cultural or religious traditions anti-historical, nor can adherence to confessional and faith-based lifestyles justify mistreatment, abuse or violence of any kind, constituting the aforementioned rights an insurmountable barrier that no alleged educational purpose, even of an ethical-religious nature, authorizes us to ignore or compress". Furthermore, the same sentence of the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Bologna, underlines the Cassation, underlines that the motive for the crime "does not find support even in the positive law of the defendants' country of origin, as it has evolved over time. The Pakistani law, in fact, has criminally sanctioned honor crimes since 2016".