Two teenage girls latest honour crime victims in Jordan

Dec 7, 2010, 14:27 GMT

Amman - Two teenage girls were killed in two different incidents in Jordan this week in what the security authorities described as 'crimes of honour,' a media report said Tuesday.

The new fatalities bring to 14 the number of girls who were killed by their relatives in Jordan in 2010 under pretexts of cleansing the honour of their respective families - a term usually referring to adultery, according to local newspapers.

One of the victims, Ayesha, 16, was killed by her father who shot her as she was getting ready for school at Naour, 15 kilometres west of Amman.

'Initial investigations indicated that the suspect murdered his daughter to cleanse his family's honour because he was suspicious of her behaviour,' papers quoted officials as saying.

Prosecutors are questioning the suspect and are expected to charge the father with premeditated murder, the sources said.

Meanwhile, pathologists are conducting an autopsy on an 18-year-divorced woman, only identified as Walaa, whose body was exhumed on Sunday two days after her burial in Maan, 200 kilometres south of Amman.

Police have received a tip that the woman, whose relatives claimed had died of natural causes, may have been murdered by her family.

Walaa was reportedly forced to marry a man who divorced her only two months after their wedding.

After returning to her family's home, one of her brothers strangled her as she was sleeping at night, papers quoted security sources as saying.

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