Murder in the Name of Honor Read Online Free

killed his entirefamily because, he said, of the pressure they were putting on him to pass his school exams.
    I was at court when I noticed a familiar face among the crowd. It was Sarhan! I could not even guess why he was a free man after such a short time in prison.
    I found a seat next to him on the bench. He flashed the same smile he gave me during our interview. When the court adjourned for a ten-minute break, I was able to exchange a few words with him.
    â€˜What are you doing here? Who wants to be back in the courtroom where he was tried?’ I asked him. He told me proudly that he had returned to offer support to a defendant with whom he had struck up a friendship during his incarceration.
    I asked him how he ended up receiving such a lenient penalty when the facts of his sister’s case were clear; it was a premeditated murder. Sarhan explained he took the advice of one of the officials who questioned him after he had turned himself in. Sarhan told the investigator in his initial testimony that he decided to kill his sister after learning that she was no longer a virgin. He said he asked his family to bail her out and that he waited for them to bring her home, which they did. The minute she walked in, he shot her to death.
    The investigator informed him that if he insisted on this version then he might face life imprisonment and advised him to change his story to say he was taken by surprise by his sister’s rape and the loss of her virginity, in order to get the lightest sentence possible. His lawyer gave him the same advice when the case was about to be heard in court.
    Sarhan’s confession meant that his father was an accomplice – a fact that was nowhere to be found in the verdict or in the charge sheet.
    â€˜I took the stand and told the judges that I had to kill my sister, because if I did not kill her, it would have been like killing more than a thousand men from my tribe.’
    I told him this was impossible. How could a court accept such an argument?
    After the court session had finished, I followed Sarhan outside. Again, I asked him why he killed her. Again, I pointed out that she had been raped. She was not at fault. He repeated what he had already told me; that she had to die because she had lost her virginity.
    He said that he sat with his father, his mother, his uncles and around eight hundred men of his tribe and they had reached this consensus together. ‘If I hadn’t killed her, people would look down on me. Once she was raped, she was no longer a girl. My only alternative was to kill her. Death is the only way to erase shame.’
    He also told me that his family and relatives visited him in prison to congratulate him on the act. Nevertheless, he did indicate that he was not entirely comfortable with what he’d done and told me he’d been ‘forced’ to kill his sister, whom he grew up with and loved deeply.
    â€˜I know my sister was killed unjustly but what can I do? This is how society thinks. Nobody really wants to kill his own sister,’ he said.
    I asked him why Yasmin’s rapist was neither similarly punished nor questioned by his family. Sarhan said his brother-in-law had vanished. He insisted that if he found him he would kill him as well.
    During the course of our conversation, I asked Sarhan how long his sentence was.
    â€˜One month for possession of an unregistered firearm and six months for the misdemeanour.’
    I sat in shock. Misdemeanour?!
    Sarhan had pleaded guilty to manslaughter and possessing an unlicensed gun during the trial, but the court decided that he did in fact ‘benefit from a reduction in penalty because he committed his crime in a fit of fury.’
    â€˜Sarhan lost his temper and killed his sister in a moment ofextreme rage after learning she was no longer a virgin. This was proven by the medical report,’ the court verdict said. The court considered the girl’s loss of her virginity a crime –