Arrest in Spain of the father of two sisters murdered in Pakistan

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 this Wednesday near Barcelona, ​​​​we have learned from police sources.

This arrest took place in Terrassa, a city in the Catalonia region (northeast of Spain), where the family resides, 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.

Killed 'for honour'

The Pakistani police consider that the two young women were killed for “

”, ​​a patriarchal practice which consists in killing women to wash away 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.

“

,” he told AFP.

Read alsoA year later, the double game of the Afghan regime disappoints its Pakistani protector

According to the Spanish daily

, their family had told them that their mother, who was in Gujrat, was sick.

The latter - who allegedly heard members of her family attack her daughters - named one of her sons as the main culprit, the newspaper said.

According to the Pakistani police, the two sisters were under "

" from their spouses to help them emigrate to Spain.

In Pakistan, police recorded more than 470 so-called “

” killings in 2021, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP).

Many cases, however, go unreported because families tend to shield those responsible.

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