Suspect detained for premeditated murder of younger married sister

AMMAN — The Criminal Court prosecutor on Wednesday charged a 34-year-old man with premeditated murder in connection with the stabbing death of his younger married sister for reasons related to family honour, official sources said.

The 32-year-old victim was allegedly stabbed to death by her brother, who worked at a shawarma place, while at her family’s home late Tuesday night in an eastern neighbourhood of Amman, a senior official source said.

The suspect then headed to the nearest police station and turned himself in, the senior official source told The Jordan Times, adding that preliminary investigations indicated that “family honour was the motive behind the murder”.

In his initial confessions in front of Criminal Court Prosecutor Ishaq Abu Awad, the suspect claimed that “he was suspicious of his sister’s behaviour and decided to kill her,” the senior judicial source said, adding that “the suspect claimed that he had recently learned of what he considered an old immoral story involving the victim and that he became suspicious of her movements, so he decided to kill her”.

On Tuesday night, the suspect went to his family’s home where the victim was staying, according to the judicial source, who maintained “when the suspect’s father went to pray, he asked his mother to make him coffee then jumped on the victim and stabbed her repeatedly”.

The victim was rushed to a nearby hospital but was declared dead on arrival, according to the judicial source. 

A postmortem conducted on the victim at the National Institute of Forensics Medicine indicated that the victim dies of multiple stab wounds, a second senior judicial source said, indicating that “the victim received several stab wounds to different parts of her body, which caused an internal bleeding”.

The suspect was ordered detained by Abu Awad for 15 days at a correctional and rehabilitation facility pending further investigations.