Possible honor killing: Pakistani father arrested for murdering his two daughters

MISE À DAY

The father of two young women residing in Spain and murdered in May 2022 in Pakistan in a probable “honor killing”, after opposing their forced marriage, was arrested on Wednesday near Barcelona , we learned from a police source. 

This arrest took place in Terrassa, a city in the Catalonia region (north-eastern Spain), where the family, this source told AFP.

Six other members of the family of Aneesa and Arooj Abbas, including one of their brothers and an uncle, suspected of having committed this double assassination, had already been arrested in Pakistan shortly after the events.

The Pakistani police consider that the two young women were killed for “honor”, ​​a patriarchal practice of killing women to clear family honor, a notion deeply rooted in this very conservative country.

Aneesa and Arooj, aged 24 and 21 respectively, were seeking separation from their Pakistani husbands who were also their cousins. They were lured in May 2022 to Gujrat, a city in eastern Pakistan, where they were strangled and shot dead, Gujrat police spokesman Nauman Hassan said at the time.

“ The family created a story to convince them to come to Pakistan for a few days,” he told AFP.

According to Spanish daily El Pais, their family told them that their mother, who was in Gujrat, was ill. The latter, who allegedly heard her family members attack her daughters, named one of her sons as the main culprit, the newspaper said.

According to Pakistani police, the two sisters were 'pressured' by their spouses to help them emigrate to Spain.

In Pakistan, police recorded more than 470 so-called 'honour' killings in 2021, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP). Many cases, however, go unreported because families tend to shield those responsible.