Zarqa man charged with premeditated murder in stabbing death of wife

AMMAN — Over the weekend, the Criminal Court prosecutor charged a man with premeditated murder in connection with the alleged stabbing death of his wife in Zarqa on Thursday, official sources said.

The man allegedly stabbed the victim to death with a kitchen knife following a domestic dispute on Thursday night, a senior judicial source said. 

“The suspect used a kitchen knife and also strangled his wife,” the senior judicial source told The Jordan Times.

The victim’s body was transferred to the Zarqa National Institute of Forensic Medicine for an autopsy, according to the judicial source.

"The post-mortem indicated that the victim was stabbed six times in the neck," according to the judicial source.

She also had ligature marks around the neck, he added. In his initial testimony to the Criminal Court prosecutor, the suspect claimed that he “beat his wife following a domestic dispute because the victim had planned to divorce him”, according to a second source close to the investigations.

“The suspect said he became enraged and strangled his wife, a mother of two, with his own hands then grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed her multiple times,” the second source added.

The suspect claimed that his wife "was three days away from getting a divorce at a Sharia court", according to the second source.

The Criminal Court prosecutor ordered the suspect’s detention at a correctional and rehabilitation centre for 15 days pending further investigation, the second source said.

According to 2021 statistics published by the Department of Statistics (DoS), around 26 per cent of Jordanian wives between the ages of 15 and 49 were abused by their husbands, while only 1 per cent of husbands have been abused by their wives.

The reported abuse covers emotional, physical and sexual abuse, according to the DoS statistics.