‘Family honour’ announced as motive for alleged murder of woman by brothers

AMMAN — “Family honour” was the motive behind the murder of a 28-year-old divorced woman in Balqa Governorate on Friday, officials said on Sunday.

The victim was allegedly shot dead by her 19-year-old brother while at a farm in Balqa, 35km northwest of Amman, a senior judicial source said.

The suspect then went to the nearest police station and turned himself in, claiming “family honour” as his motive, the judicial source told The Jordan Times.

 “The suspect told interrogators that he murdered his sister due to her immoral behaviour,” according to the judicial source.

However, Criminal Court Prosecutor Salah Taleb decided to also detain two of the victim’s other brothers, charging the three siblings with complicity in premeditated murder.

A postmortem conducted by a team of pathologists in Balqa National Institute of Forensic Medicine, headed by Ali Bqour, concluded that the victim died of multiple gunshot wounds, a senior medical source said.

“The victim was shot by a minimum of five bullets that penetrated different parts of her body,” the medical source told The Jordan Times.

The medical source added that the victim was “not pregnant” and that “swabs and tissue samples were taken from the victim’s body for further analysis”.

“It will take the criminal lab around one month to analyse the samples and come up with conclusions,” according to the medical source.