Significant verdict

The Court of Cassation Tuesday set a landmark legal precedent by stiffening the sentence against two men who had murdered their sister in the name of “family honour”. 

The two brothers had been sentenced by the criminal court to prison terms ranging from seven-and-half to ten years for their crime — poisoning their sister despite having promised not to harm her — after the family dropped charges against them.

The Court of Cassation, however, wishing to “send a strong message... that killing women in the name of family honour will no longer be tolerated by our court”, increased the jail term to 15 and 20 years.

Judge Hisham Tal, who heads the Court of Cassation and is also the president of the Higher Judicial Council, said the act was done in defiance of religious tenets: “What the defendants did violates religious teachings that forbid taking the life of any human being.” 

The tougher verdict, issued symbolically on Mother’s Day, should set a precedent, said Judge Mohammad Tarawneh, one of the five justices at the Court of Cassation, “and will become the rule in line of which other verdicts in similar circumstances will be handled in the future”.

Kudos to the judges. 

Taking the law in one’s hands and acting like divinity, taking the life of a fellow human being, should never be accepted. And the ridiculous “crimes of honour”, the excuse of sick-minded males exercising power over helpless women, have been perpetrated for far too long, often with impunity.

As Tarawneh said, “this will be the real deterrent to such murders because the exonerating factor will not be regarded by the Cassation Court anymore”.

That is great, but it should go farther than the “crimes of honour”.

Every crime should be punished according to the law, and the notion that the family of the victim can drop charges, which enables the court to be more lenient, should be totally rejected.

Murder cannot be condoned and if perpetrated, it has to be punished.

Still, a good beginning was made, and the judiciary deserves to be praised for it.