The boyfriend of Saman Abbas, an
18-year-old Pakistani-Italian woman allegedly killed by her
family near Reggio Emilia in April-May 2021 for refusing an
arranged marriage with an older man in Pakistan, will set up a
foundation for other victims of so-called 'honour' crimes with
any damages he gets from a trial that started against five of
her relatives in Reggio Friday, his lawyer said.
Saqib Ayub wants to see justice done for his late girlfriend and
will use any damages from standing as a civil plantiff in the
proceedings to set up a foundation against 'honour killing' and
to help victims of forced marriages in her name, his lawyer
Claudio Falleti said.
"If we ever get any money, we will use it to open a Saman
Foundation to safeguard victims of forced marriages," Falleti
told QB-Il Resto del Carlino newspaper.
The young man will not be present in the courtroom Friday,
Falleti said.
"Only I will go. He doesn't want to see those monsters," he
said, referring to three of the five defendants who will be in
the dock: Danish Hasnain, Saman's uncle, and her two cousins
Ikram Ijaz and Nomanhulaq Nomanhulaq.
Missing will be the late young woman's mother, Nazia Shaheen,
still on the run in Pakistan, and her father Shabbar Abbas, in
jail in Pakistan, which has yet to grant his extradition to
Italy.
Falleti called the delays in the extradition process
"unacceptable".
o judicial sources.
On January 31 Saman's uncle, Hasnain, accused by his nephew,
Saman's brother, of strangling her, said that he did not do the
deed but did accompany the young woman's two cousins, Nomanhulaq
and Ijaz, to bury her body together near the family home at
Novellara near Reggio Emilia, according to judicial sources.
On November 2018 Hasnain took police to the place near the
family home where they buried Abbas after 18 months of vain
searches, even with sniffer dogs, because the body was too far
down in the ground.
Hasnain, the uncle, reportedly told police her cousins blamed
the mother for the murder but he did not think she had done it
either.
On January 4 Saman's body was ID'd from her teeth, said a lawyer
for the Penelope missing persons and women's rights group who is
also a civil plaintiff in the trial.
The lawyer, Barbara Iannucelli, said a bone in Abbas's neck had
been broken and further examination will be needed to establish
if this injury was inflicted pre- or post-mortem.
The fracture of the bone in the front of the neck would support
the hypothesis that she was strangled by her uncle, as he has
been charged.
The alleged 'honour killing" was perpetrated, police said,
because of Saman's refusal to marry the older man in Pakistan
and also because the family objected to the western-style life
she was living with her boyfriend, Ayub.
Saman had taken refuge in a women's shelter but her mother lured
her back to be killed, police say, by promising her that they
would let her live as she wanted.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA
