Saman Abbas: Mother arrested in Pakistan over teen’s murder

A woman convicted of murdering her teenage daughter in Italy has reportedly been arrested in Pakistan after three years on the run.

An Italian court gave Nazia Shaheen a life sentence in absentia last December for the 2021 killing of Saman Abbas, 18.

Shaheen and her husband, Shabbar Abbas, killed their daughter after she refused an arranged marriage.

The two then fled the country, with Abbas eventually found and extradited from Pakistan in August 2023.

But Shaheen, 51, had avoided arrest until this week, when she was reportedly tracked to a village on Kashmir’s border in an operation involving Interpol and the Pakistan Federal Police, sources told Italian news agency Ansa.

She appeared in court on Friday in the country’s capital Islamabad, for extradition procedures, Italian newspapers reported.

Saman Abbas’s so-called honour killing by her family in late April 2021 shocked Italy. Following her disappearance, Italy’s union of Islamic communities issued a fatwa – a religious ruling – rejecting forced marriages.

The teenager had emigrated with her family from Pakistan to the farm town of Novellara in 2016, according to Italian reports.

After finding out Saman Abbas was dating, the family had wanted her to travel to Pakistan for an arranged marriage in 2020, but she refused.

She then spent several months living under the protection of social services, but returned to the family home in Novellara seven months later, after being tricked into returning, Italian reports said.

Prosecutors said it was at this point the teenager disappeared.

Saman Abbas’s body was eventually recovered in November 2021, close to a farm house not far from where the family lived, after her uncle had revealed where she had been buried.

A post mortem examination found she had suffered a broken neck bone, possibly as a result of being strangled.