I’ve reported previously on the case of Saman Abbas, a young Pakistani woman in Italy who disappeared and was thought to have been a victim of an “honor killing” (see previously here, here, here, here, and here). One of her cousins is the latest of her relatives to be arrested. Some of the others were arrested previously in France, but this one was nabbed in Barcelona.

Many thanks to Gary Fouse for translating this article from El Mundo:

Fugitive wanted in Italy for killing his cousin, who refused an arranged marriage, is arrested

The suspect, of Pakistani nationality, participated in the crime with the rest of his family.

It was a crime that shocked all of Italy in May of last year. A family decided to end the life of an 18-year-old woman for refusing to comply with the decision of her parents to arrange a marriage with another relative of their choice living in Pakistan whom she did not know; go with them to her land of birth, and live according to the most rigorous rules of Islam. One of the suspects in the crime, a cousin of the victim, was arrested in Barcelona in an operation by the National Police and the Italian Carabinieri force.

He is facing life in prison for the crimes of unlawful detention, homicide, and concealment of a cadaver, and is now in judicial custody awaiting authorization to proceed with his extradition. The events occurred in Novellara, in the region of Emilio Romagna, where the fugitive directly participated in the crime. According to investigations carried out by the Carabinieri of Reggio Emilia, the accused, cousin of the victim, together with another cousin and an uncle, in addition to having the complicity of the parents of the woman, at the end of their working day dug a hole with agricultural tools in an unidentified area located behind the shed of the farm where they worked.

It was their intention to hide the body of the young woman when they killed her the next day, to which the entire family agreed. After the crime, some of the suspects escaped, and in September of last year, police managed to arrest the uncle of the woman in Paris, who was accused of being the material perpetrator of her death by strangulation. This Monday, agents of the National Police detained the cousin, who was hiding in the Trinidad neighborhood of Barcelona.

The death of the young woman provoked a wide debate in the Pakistani Muslim community in Italy over the intergenerational conflict at the root of integration in the West of the second generation of Muslims who challenge some of the traditions like those that the victim opposed.