Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation upheld the murder convictions of five relatives of Saman Abbas on Wednesday, closing one of the country's most high-profile "honour killing" cases.
The Pakistani-origin teenager was killed in 2021 in Novellara after refusing her family's plan to marry her to a cousin in Pakistan.
Who was Saman Abbas and why was she killed?
Saman Abbas was an 18-year-old Pakistani-origin woman living in Novellara, in northern Italy.
Prosecutors said her family killed her in 2021 after she rejected an arranged marriage to a cousin in Pakistan, having already reported her parents to police the previous year.
What did Italy's top court rule in the Saman Abbas case?
The Supreme Court of Cassation confirmed life sentences for Abbas' parents, Shabbar Abbas and Nazia Shaheen, and her cousins, Ijaz Ikram and Nomanul Haq, Italian media reported. It also upheld a 22-year prison sentence for her uncle, Danish Hasnain.
The ruling brings a final, definitive close to the case after years of investigation and trial. The convictions cannot be appealed further in the Italian court system.
How was Saman Abbas' disappearance investigated?
In 2020, Abbas sought help from social services after opposing the proposed marriage and was placed in a shelter. She filed a police complaint against her parents but returned to the family home in April 2021.
Police launched a search for her on May 5, 2021, after finding the house deserted. Investigators discovered that her parents had travelled to Pakistan without her. Security camera footage from days earlier showed five people leaving the property carrying shovels, a crowbar and a bucket, then returning about two and a half hours later, which raised investigators' suspicions.
Her body was found more than a year later, near an abandoned farmhouse close to the family's home. Both parents had fled to Pakistan after the killing and were later extradited to Italy to stand trial.
How did Italy react to the Saman Abbas ruling?
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni welcomed the verdict, saying a "painful judicial saga" had finally come to an end. "No verdict can bring her life back, but it is right that those responsible for this barbaric crime have been definitively convicted," she wrote on social media.
Meloni added that Italy had "no room for those who presume to deny, in the name of supposed cultural or religious justifications, a woman's freedom, dignity and life." She called those principles "non-negotiable."
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