Father charged with premeditated murder for drowning 2 children in Zarqa stream

AMMAN — The Criminal Court prosecutor on Monday charged a 51-year-old father with two counts of premeditated murder in connection with the alleged drowning of his two children in the Zarqa stream a day earlier, official sources said.

The Zarqa Family Protection Department received a complaint that a "father has left his home and took his children to an unknown destination and that the caller feared that he had harmed his two children," Police Spokesperson Lt. Col. Amer Sartawi said.

When the father was contacted, Sartawi told The Jordan Times, "he alleged that he threw his two children in the Zarqa stream".

A senior judicial source told The Jordan Times that the victims were a five-year-old girl and an eight-month-old boy.

Civil Defence Department (CDD) divers were dispatched to the Zarqa stream to search for the two children and found after seven hours of search, the senior judicial source said.

Criminal Court Prosecutor Hussein Khalaileh is currently questioning the suspect who claimed that "he threw the children in the stream over family feuds with his wife," according to the senior judicial source.

A post-mortem conducted at the National Institute of Forensic Medicine indicated that the victims died of drowning, a senior medical source said.

"Forensic experts detected some bruises and contusions on the victims' heads and other parts of their body that were the result of bumping into rocks while being drafted by the stream," the senior medical source told The Jordan Times.

Khalaileh ordered that the suspect be detained for 15 days at a correctional and rehabilitation centre pending further investigation into the incident.