An Italian court has sentenced two parents to life in jail for murdering their teenage daughter after she refused to travel to Pakistan for an arranged marriage.

The so-called honour killing of 18-year-old Saman Abbas, who went missing in April 2021, shocked Italy.

Shabbar Abbas, the victim’s father, was convicted by the court in the northern city of Reggio Emilia on Tuesday after being extradited from Pakistan to be tried.

Nazia Shaheen, the victim’s mother who remains at large and is believed to be in hiding in Pakistan, was tried and sentenced in absentia.

Ms Abbas’ remains were found near her family home in the town of Novellara in November 2022, some 18 months after she went missing.

She was identified by her dental records. An autopsy revealed the teenager had suffered a broken neck bone, possibly as a result of being strangled.

Danish Hasnain, Ms Abbas’ uncle, was given 14 years in jail for involvement in the murder, but two of her cousins were cleared of any wrongdoing.

The verdict was at a court of first instance and can be appealed.

Father protests innocence

Her father, who had been extradited to Italy in August to face trial after he was arrested in his village in eastern Pakistan on suspicion of murder, wept and protested his innocence in testimony given to the court on Tuesday.

“This trial is not complete. I too want to know who killed my daughter,” he said, according to local media reports.

Ms Abbas’ killing is one of a string of high-profile criminal cases in Italy involving the murder or mistreatment of women or girls who have rebelled against relatives insisting they enter arranged marriages.

In the wake of her disappearance, Italy’s union of Islamic communities issued a religious ruling rejecting forced marriages.

The teenager had emigrated to Italy with her family from Pakistan in 2016, according to local media reports.

Often pictured wearing red lipstick and a red headband, she has since become a symbol of violence against women in the country.

Parents’ anger over boyfriend

Prosecutors said Ms Abbas’ parents were angered when they discovered she had a boyfriend, reported to be of Pakistani origin.

Investigators said they had wanted her to travel to Pakistan for an arranged marriage in 2020, but she refused, leading to a row which resulted in her living for several months under the protection of social services.

She returned to the family home in April 2021 after receiving a flurry of messages from relatives, according to local media reports.

Prosecutors said she had been tricked into going back and disappeared afterwards.

Ms Abbas’ parents later alleged that she was killed when she returned to the family home to collect some documents.

CCTV footage released by the police showed three of her relatives carrying spades, a crowbar and a blue bag on April 29, 2021. Separate footage recorded the following day showed the teenager leaving her family home alongside her parents.

Her body was eventually recovered close to a nearby farm house, after her uncle told investigators where she was buried.

Ms Abbas’ parents left for Pakistan immediately after she went missing, while Mr Hasnain and two of her cousins travelled to France and Spain. Her uncle was detained in Paris later in 2021.

Honour killings ‘shameful’

Tuesday’s ruling was welcomed by political leaders and activists, with deputy prime minister and head of the hard-Right League Party Matteo Salvini saying it underscored the need “to fight violence against women and Islamist fanaticism every day”.

Antonio Tajani, the foreign minister, described the decision as just, adding that honour killings were shameful and had to be stopped.

“(We must) stop the use of women as slaves who have to take meaningless orders from parents,” Mr Tajani said.

Every year, hundreds of women in predominantly Muslim Pakistan are victims of honour killings, carried out by relatives professing to be acting in defence of a family’s honour, often in deeply conservative rural areas.

Several such murders have also been carried out in Europe in recent years.

Differenza Donna, an Italian organisation fighting violence against women, said it hoped the court decision would contribute to a change in Italy’s judicial system, arguing it too often minimised male violence against women.

The ruling came after the killing last month of a 22-year-old university student and the arrest of her ex-boyfriend for the crime sparked an outpouring of grief and anger in Italy, where many women say sexism is entrenched and toxic male behaviour often goes unchecked.