After spending three years on the run, a woman who was found guilty of killing her teenage daughter in Italy is apparently now in custody in Pakistan.
In December of last year, an Italian court sentenced Nazia Shaheen to life in prison in absentia for the 2021 murder of 18-year-old Saman Abbas.
After their daughter refused to be married in an arranged marriage, Shaheen and her husband, Shabbar Abbas, killed her.
After then, the two left the nation; in August 2023, Abbas was eventually located and deported from Pakistan.
However, Shaheen, 51, had escaped capture until this week, when sources told the Italian news agency Ansa that she was traced to a village on the border of Kashmir through an Interpol and Pakistan Federal Police operation.
She appeared in court on Friday for extradition proceedings in Islamabad, the nation’s capital.
The alleged honor killing of Saman Abbas by her family in late April 2021 shocked Italy. Following her disappearance, Italy’s union of Islamic groups issued a fatwa – a religious decree – opposing forced marriages.
Italian sources stated that in 2016, the youngster moved to the agricultural town of Novellara from Pakistan with her family.
The family had wanted Saman Abbas to travel to Pakistan in 2020 for an arranged marriage after learning that she was seeing someone else, but she had declined.
