This post is republished with permission from Remix News
Italy’s Court of Cassation has upheld the convictions of five members of a Pakistani migrant family over the honor killing of 18-year-old Saman Abbas in northern Italy.
Her parents, Shabbar Abbas and Nazia Shaheen, and her cousins, Ijaz Ikram and Noman Ul Haq, will serve life sentences. Her uncle, Danish Hasnain, was sentenced to 22 years in prison. The Supreme Court rejected the defendants’ appeals, making the sentences final.
Saman was strangled in Novellara, in the province of Reggio Emilia, on the night of April 30 to May 1, 2021. She had rejected a forced marriage to an older man in Pakistan, reported her parents for abuse, and made clear that she wanted to choose whom she loved, how she dressed, and how she lived.
As cited by Il Giornale, Attorney General Marco Dall’Olio described the murder as “chilling” and said it had been planned in detail as punishment for Saman’s refusal to obey her family.
“The intention was to teach her a lesson: she couldn’t make her own decisions about her life, she couldn’t have a life of her own,” he told the court.
Prosecutors argued that the killing was premeditated and driven by the family’s refusal to accept Saman’s desire for self-determination. The appeal judges found that her wish to escape the rules imposed by her parents was treated as a serious offense within the family.
The investigation began after Saman disappeared and her then-boyfriend raised concerns. Surveillance footage from the farm where the family worked showed several people heading toward nearby fields with digging tools shortly before she vanished.
Her parents then returned to Pakistan, while other relatives attempted to flee through France and Spain. The suspects were arrested at different times and extradited to Italy.
Saman’s remains were found in November 2022 near an abandoned farmhouse after information was provided by her uncle. An autopsy confirmed that she had died from strangulation.
At the first trial in 2023, her parents were sentenced to life imprisonment and her uncle received 14 years, while the cousins were acquitted. Prosecutors appealed, arguing that all five relatives had played a role in the murder.
In April 2025, the Bologna Court of Appeal overturned the cousins’ acquittals and sentenced them to life imprisonment. It also increased the uncle’s sentence to 22 years.
Maria Teresa Manente, a lawyer representing the women’s rights organization Differenza Donna, said the killing was not an impulsive act but a deliberate punishment for Saman’s attempt to live freely.
“The plan to kill her was born at the exact moment Saman dared to assert her right to choose who to love, whether to study, how to dress, how to live,” she said. “Her freedom was her ‘crime’ in the eyes of her family; her life was the punishment.”
On Wednesday, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said that, with the final verdict, “a painful judicial saga comes to a close.”
“Saman, a young woman of Pakistani origin in Italy, was killed by her parents and some relatives after she opposed a forced marriage and asserted her right to freely choose her own future.
“No verdict can bring her life back, but it is right that those responsible for this barbaric crime have been definitively convicted.
“In Italy, there is no room for those who presume to deny, in the name of supposed cultural or religious justifications, a woman’s freedom, dignity, and life. These are non-negotiable principles from which we will never retreat,” she added.
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