They dreamed of leaving fear and death threats behind. In the future they had imagined there was coexistence, marriage, freedom. A hope that lasted six months: from when they got together to when Saman Abbas it disappeared into thin air, on the night between April 30 and May 1 a year ago. Killed and never found again. An “honor killing” ordered by the family.
July 23, 2021 Saqib Ayub he tells the carabinieri that Saman “would have wanted more freedom”. Countrymen, they had met on TikTok in August a year earlier. He was in his early twenties and she was 18. In October 2020, investigators write, the “virtual” engagement. A few months before her, the girl had already run away from her house in Novellara, in the Reggio area: her family wanted her to marry a cousin ten years older than her in Pakistan. Then the flight to Belgium, the subsequent return to Emilia, the placement in a community in Bologna in autumn. But at her side this time there is Saqib: chats, phone calls, video calls.
On January 17, 2021, the couple embraces for the first time in Bologna. “We met in secret, she fled the community and spent the nights in a hotel,” says Saqib. Under the arcades their love becomes stronger. Moments of normality: the girl posts on Instagram the photo of the two of them kissing. The image comes to the family. It is perhaps from this moment that a love story becomes one of darkness, slips into the darkness of revenge.
Saman Abbas, in a video of the Tgr Emilia Romagna records his last minutes of life
At the end of January, Saman’s father, Shabbar, flew to Pakistan. The eighteen-year-old herself told the carabinieri why some time later, on April 22, 2022: “My father reached Saqib’s family saying that if she hadn’t intervened to interrupt the relationship with me, she would have killed both him and his entire family. It was accompanied by three other relatives who had fired gunshots in the air “. In front of the carabinieri, Saman also recorded these words: “Just this morning, my mom and my father talked to my cousin’s parents and they decided that in June we will go to Pakistan for my wedding. I don’t want to go. in Pakistan to get married, I don’t want to get married to him. ”
But why is Saman, in April 2021, a few days before disappearing, back in Novellara with his parents? Her boyfriend explains it: in the first days of the month, the eighteen-year-old escapes from the community and joins him in Rome, where he works. They decide to spend their lives together, to get married. But she is undocumented, so she decides to go to her parents to get them. While she is in the family home, she hears a voice message from her mother’s cell phone: a certain Uncle Mamu talks about the need to kill a girl.
Saman Abbas, the video that frames the uncle and two cousins accused of his murder
Saman gets scared, asks for explanations, her mother reassures her: she wasn’t talking about you but about another person in Pakistan. Saqib is also scared of the message, he suggests that she go to the carabinieri. Saman refuses: if I denounce, I go back to the community. No, the plan is different, and she writes it, using her mother’s mobile phone, in the last chat with her boyfriend on April 30 (which he recommends to cancel): on May 4 I will have recovered documents and a phone and I will be from you. It will not go like this.
The desperation of Saman’s boyfriend: now tell us where the body is
by Rosario Di Raimondo
“Saman told me that her cousins and uncle constantly offended her and that she was very afraid of Danish (in prison for the murder of the girl, ed) as she had already killed – says Saqib – He told me that his father could order the murder of other people “. Even after Saman’s disappearance, Saqib has no peace. On May 12, 2021, he filed a complaint with the carabinieri. From an unknown profile on Instagram he receives threats and insults: “You are a son of a dog, your mother is a bitch, run away, run away, so we find you”.
On 11 May he receives a video call “and I manage to take a screenshot and a video of the face. From the face I can identify Saman’s father as the person who was constantly calling me to threaten and offend me with unspeakable words.” The same man who, intercepted, will say of his daughter: “I killed her for my dignity, for my honor”.
Saman Abbas, the story of his cousin: “Killed with a rope and thrown into the Po”
