The first criminal section of the Court of Cassation has rejected the appeals of the defendants, making the convictions for the murder of Saman Abbas definitive. The 18-year-old Pakistani girl was killed in the night between April 30 and May 1, 2021, in Novellara, in the province of Reggio Emilia.

The Supreme Court confirmed the four life sentences imposed on April 18 of last year by the Bologna Court of Appeal against the girl's parents, Shabbar Abbas and Nazia Shaheen, and her cousins Noman Ul Haq and Ijaz Ikram, convicted of murder and concealment of a corpse. The 22-year prison sentence for the uncle, Danish Hasnain, was also confirmed. In the first instance, the uncle had been sentenced to 14 years; the sentence was increased on appeal after the aggravating circumstances of premeditation and abject motives were recognized, deemed equivalent to the generic mitigating circumstances already granted for his cooperation in locating the body.

In the first-instance ruling, the cousins had been acquitted; the appeals court overturned that decision, convicting them to life imprisonment by recognizing the aggravating circumstances of premeditation and abject motives. The Cassation upheld the request of the prosecutor general, with Avvocato Generale Marco Dall'Olio, who at the hearing on June 17 had argued that the case involved a premeditated act rather than a crime of impulse.

According to the prosecution, the young woman was killed for opposing an arranged marriage and for pursuing a lifestyle deemed incompatible with family traditions. Before her death, when she was still 17, Saman had contacted social services to report her parents for mistreatment and inducement to marry. She had then returned home, but her relatives had taken away her documents.

The girl was killed by strangulation in the driveway in front of her home and buried in a hole dug under a ruin about 100 meters from the family residence. Her boyfriend alerted law enforcement. The body was found on November 18, 2022, after the uncle, who had fled abroad and was apprehended in Paris, indicated the burial site to investigators.

The lawyer Maria Teresa Manente, of the Differenza Donna association, which joined the proceedings as a civil party, commented that the ruling confirms that Saman was killed for asserting her right to choose her own life, describing the act as a punishment rooted in a patriarchal family order. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni stated that there is no room for those who deny women's freedom.