JERUSALEM — An Israeli court sentenced a man to 16 years in prison on Tuesday for aiding in the so-called honor killing of his sister. The case was unusual in that the women of the family broke their code of silence and testified against the man.
The victim, Hamda Abu Ghanem, 18, was shot dead in her home in Ramla, a town of Jews and Arabs in central Israel, in January 2007. She was the eighth female of the Abu Ghanem clan, which is Muslim, to have been killed in seven years. It remains unclear why she was killed.
The cases against suspects in the earlier Abu Ghanem killings ended without convictions — mainly, according to the Ramla police, because relatives maintained silence and cleared all the evidence away.
But after the killing of Hamda, about 20 female relatives spoke up, among them Amama Abu Ghanem, the mother of Hamda and of Rashad, the brother now sentenced to prison in a plea agreement.