Shabbar Abbas, father of 18-year-old Pakistani Saman, has decided to participate in the trial for the murder of his daughter via video link . The green light came this morning from Pakistan, where the man is being held pending the extradition requested by Italy the day following his arrest in mid-November in the Punjab region.
Postponement after postponement, the request of the Italian judges has not had any response at the moment, while the judge of Islamabad has denied the release on bail requested by the man's lawyer .
Shabbar therefore remains in his cell and, after an initial refusal, has now also agreed to participate in the trial that began in mid-February before the Reggio Emilia Assizes Court. A decision that could change the course of the proceedings.
Saman Abbas disappeared in the night between 30 April and 1 May 2021 and her body was found buried in a farmhouse in the countryside of Novellara (in the Bassa Reggiana), not far from where the 18-year-old lived with her family. At trial for the murder, kidnapping and suppression of the body are the two parents (the mother Nazia is still on the run in Pakistan), the two cousins Ikram Ijaz and Nomanhulaq Nomanhulaq and the uncle Danish Hasnain (the latter three all in prison in Italy.
According to the indictment , the family members, in competition with each other, would have killed her because Saman had opposed a forced marriage with a cousin in her homeland and had adopted too westernized attitudes .
In the next hearing in Islamabad, scheduled for April 11, the Pakistani authorities will therefore have to discuss this video-link and its technical feasibility, to then give the green light. The next hearing in Reggio Emilia is scheduled for 14 April .
In the last hearing, on Friday, Shabbar's position had been separated from the other defendants, just waiting for his possible video link. A little later Saman's voice rang out in the classroom, contained in some vocal messages played through the loudspeakers: " I'm back home, I'll explain everything to you but I can't talk now, they're always watching me ", she said to the educator of the Bologna community , in which she had fled after being estranged from her parents, a few hours before her death.
(Unioneonline/L)
