Strong condemnation of recent unfair sentence against wife killer

The mitigated 5-year imprisonment term for the killer of wife, Manal Assi, pronounced by the Criminal Court of Beirut last Thursday, while charging the victim with responsibility for allegedly unlawful conduct towards her husband, ( http://bit.ly/2amjtWE) has aroused a wave of condemnations to this effect. KAFA Enough Violence and Exploitation organization said it believed the five-year term was a gift handed by the court to the culprit, describing the verdict as totally absurd. “It completely disregards the ethical and logical considerations and human rights principles that our legislations are still a far cry from,” KAFA noted, and “How cheap the lives of women in our country have become,” it concluded. Likewise, lawyer Manar Zuaiter maintained that “the woman magistrate (Helena Iskandar) who issued the sentence has given herself the powers to morally judge a woman killed by her husband.” This, Zu3aiter lamented, while completely ignoring the circumstances of the crime, the judge also overlooked the fact that the killer husband was known for his violent behavior which makes him a real threat to society. Zu3aiter also revealed the act of betrayal of the husband, and his marriage to another woman, questioning whether the act was morally acceptable. Similarly, a number of jurists agreed that the above sentence was unfair and reinvigorates the notion of ‘honor killings’ through Article 252 of the Penal Code. The latter states that the victim’s family by dropping its personal right is acknowledging that the pronounced verdict is a ‘crime of honor’. This, legal experts pointed out, makes a decision to appeal almost impossible, given the male chauvinist mentality behind the act of relinquishment of the personal right. (As Safir, Al Akhbar, Al Mustaqbal, July 16, 2016)

 

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