Not only for fraud as it emerged at first, Shabbar Abbas was arrested for the murder of his daughter Saman , who disappeared from Novellara (Reggio Emilia) in 2021.

The man's escape was interrupted in his native Punjab , the region where he lived before moving to work in the Reggio countryside and where he had hurriedly returned with his wife to escape arrest by the Italian authorities.

Yesterday the Pakistani federal police reached him at 6pm local time and handcuffed him on the basis of a request for provisional arrest for extradition purposes made by Italy and implemented by Pakistan. He was alone and offered no resistance. His wife Nazia Shaheen is untraceable, as reported by Pakistan to the Italian authorities. The arrest warrant also concerns her, as does the extradition request signed in July 2021 by Minister Marta Cartabia.

Shabbar Abbas was taken to the capital Islamabad, where the hearing for the notification of the documents took place today behind closed doors. The next one, scheduled for November 24, will be dedicated to defense counter-arguments.

HISTORY

Saman was punished according to Italian investigators for objecting to an arranged marriage . She had first denounced her family members and had been placed in a protected community for a period. Then, when she turned 18, the girl had returned to the family, but only to have the documents and be able to live her own life, with a boyfriend she met in Italy.

Parents didn't allow it. According to the investigation , they murdered her in competition with three other relatives, her uncle Danish Hasnain and her cousins Ikram Ijaz and Nomanhulaq Nomanhulaq .

All five have already been indicted, with the first hearing of the trial set for February 10. But it is not yet clear whether Italy will have obtained the handover of Shabbar from Pakistan by that date, in the absence of treaties on extraditions, nor for how long it will remain in custody in its country.

THE INTERCEPTIONS

Among the strongest elements collected by the investigators against the 46-year-old is an interception with a relative, recorded a month after his escape to Pakistan. " I killed my daughter ," said Saman's father. The same family member, heard by the carabinieri, confirmed the content of the phone call by explaining that Shabbar had told him: « I'm already dead, I killed her, I killed her for my dignity and for my honour. We killed her .'

Even his wife Nazia, the only one still free of the five accused (her uncle and cousins were arrested in Italy) in a conversation via chat with her minor son who remained in Italy, at the end of August 2021, said: « Your father and I are dead there ".

According to the investigators, Shabbar and Nazia are involved in the crime, but the material executor is considered to be their uncle Hasnain , tracked down in the suburbs of Paris in September 2021. Saman's body has never been found, according to her younger brother she was strangled by a uncle. The boy, who is in a secure facility, said he attended a family meeting where they talked about how to make his sister's body disappear, dismembering it and throwing it into a river .

Before Danish, Ijaz had been arrested, also in France, in June, and later Nomanhulaq, in February, in Barcelona. So far all three, who are now in prison in Reggio Emilia, have said they have nothing to do with Saman's disappearance.

(Unioneonline/L)

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