A woman convicted of murdering her teenage daughter in Italy has been arrested in Pakistan after three years on the run.
An Italian court sentenced Nazia Shaheen to life in prison last December for the 2021 killing of her 18-year-old daughter, Saman Abbas.
Shaheen and her husband, Shabbar Abbas, killed their daughter because she refused an arranged marriage. The couple then fled Italy, with Shabbar being extradited from Pakistan in August 2023.
Shaheen, 51, avoided arrest until now, when she was reportedly found in a village on the Kashmir border during an operation involving Interpol and the Pakistan Federal Police, according to Italian news agency Ansa.
She appeared in court on Friday in Islamabad for extradition procedures, Italian newspapers reported.
Saman Abbas’s murder in April 2021 shocked Italy. After her disappearance, Italy’s union of Islamic communities issued a religious ruling rejecting forced marriages.
The family had moved from Pakistan to the farm town of Novellara in 2016. When the family discovered Saman was dating, they wanted her to go to Pakistan for an arranged marriage in 2020, but she refused.
Saman then lived under social services’ protection for several months but was tricked into returning home seven months later, Italian reports said.
Prosecutors said that after her return, Saman disappeared. Her body was found in November 2021 near a farmhouse close to where the family lived, after her uncle revealed the burial site.
A post-mortem examination showed she had a broken neck bone, likely from being strangled.
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