33-year-old charged with murdering wife of 14 years

AMMAN — A 33-year-old man has been charged with the premeditated murder of his wife, whose body was found dumped in a cesspool in Naour on Thursday, official sources said Saturday.

The Civil Defence Department (CDD) was called to the scene to pull the victim from the cesspool near the suspect’s house, a CDD official source said.

“It took us more than two hours to pull the woman from the four-metre hole,” the CDD official told The Jordan Times.

On Friday, the authorities announced the arrest of the woman’s husband and said “he was the prime suspect in the case after one of their children informed the police about the incident,” according to a senior judicial source.

“The suspect was summoned by police and confessed to murdering his wife over family feuds,” the judicial source said.

In his initial confessions to police and Criminal Court Prosecutor Tayseer Bani Khalid, the source said “the suspect had an argument with his wife, shot her with a pump-action rifle three times, including a fatal bullet to the chest.”

Bani Khalid charged the suspect with premeditated murder and possession of a firearm and ordered his detention at a correctional and rehabilitation centre for 15 days pending further investigation into the incident.

Bani Khalid is expected to hear more witnesses on Sunday, the judicial source added.

The victim is survived by five children between the ages of two and 13, and the couple had been married for 14 years, the source added.