Two relatives charged with murder in 'staged road accident'

AMMAN — The Criminal Court prosecutor has charged two relatives with premeditated murder in connection with the death of a 28-year-old man in a staged road accident recently in an east Amman suburb, official sources said Tuesday.

The two suspects, aged 33 and 43, reportedly confessed to murdering the victim over old feuds, then staging his death to appear like a road accident, a senior judicial source said.

The suspects told Criminal Court Prosecutor Salah Taleb that on May 26, they met the victim at a rented apartment and had an argument over old financial issues, the judicial source told The Jordan Times.

"One of the suspects had old grudges against the victim because of financial issues that led to his imprisonment for four months," the source said.

The suspects said "an argument ensued and they struck him with a wooden stick on his head", according to the source.

The suspects placed the victim in his own minivan, the source maintained, and drove to a remote area where they "struck him repeatedly on the head with a rock to make sure he was dead".

The suspects rolled the van down a hill to "mislead the investigations and make it look like an accident", according to a statement by the Public Security Department (PSD).

"The government forensic doctors, who conduct routine autopsies on traffic accident victims, concluded that it was a homicide and not an accident," the PSD report said.

A special investigation team that was formed, the PSD statement added, "revisited the scene of the accident with crime lab experts and concluded that the death was not the result of a traffic accident".

"The special team's investigations led them to the two suspects and they monitored them for a brief period then arrested them," the PSD statement added.

Taleb ordered the detention of both suspects, who re-enacted the incident, at a correctional and rehabilitation centre pending further investigations.