Mother, son charged over murder of 22-year-old woman

AMMAN — A man and his mother were charged on Saturday by the Criminal Court prosecutor in connection with the murder of their divorced female relative for reasons related to family honour in an eastern Amman suburb over the weekend, official sources said.

The 22-year-old victim was first allegedly asked by her mother to consume medical pills to end her life, and then was reportedly strangled by her brother “when he discovered that she did not die from the pills”, a senior judicial source said.

The 27-year-old brother then contacted police claiming that his sister had committed suicide, according to a Public Security Department (PSD) statement.

But further investigation and examination of the body proved that the woman was murdered, the PSD said.

The judicial source told The Jordan Times that the murder was committed “in the name of family honour”.

The two suspects claimed in their initial confessions before Criminal Court Prosecutor Omar Hiyari that the victim, who was divorced and had a three-year-old son, had been missing for the past three months, according to the judicial source.

Last Wednesday, the source maintained, the victim returned home willingly and “was wearing tight clothes, a tank top and her hair was showing, unlike the conservative dress the family abides by”, according to the mother’s testimony.

The mother asked her daughter about her whereabouts, the source maintained, and the mother claimed that “the victim informed her that she was working at a nightclub and living with a man in an apartment”, the judicial source said, adding that it was not clear why the victim decided to return home.

“The mother was enraged and notified her son who also was furious,” the source explained. 

The mother told her son she would convince the victim to consume pills to kill herself, he added.

In her initial testimony before Hiyari, the mother said that her son “tied up his sister to restrain her movement then went to work”, while she gave her daughter various medical pills on Wednesday night and asked her to consume them in an attempt to kill her, the judicial source said.

When the brother returned home, the “woman was not dead so he choked her with his own hands on Thursday evening until he made sure she was dead”.

Hiyari charged the brother with premeditated murder and the mother with attempted premeditated murder, and ordered the two suspects detained at two correctional and rehabilitation centres pending further investigation and the questioning of more relatives, a second source told The Jordan Times.