Hagen, Germany – A 21-year-old man has been sentenced to 14 years in jail for killing his cousin in a so-called ‘honour-killing’, a German regional court said Tuesday.
The victim, a 20-year-old woman, was shot dead in a motorway carpark in August 2008, after what the court in North-Rhine Westphalia described as a ‘family tribunal’ had ruled that the woman’s ‘westernized’ lifestyle outraged members of her conservative Syrian-origin family.
A second man, the 48-year-old uncle of the victim, was also implicated in the crime, but has since fled Germany.
The court said that the family had objected to the woman’s way of dressing, her habit of smoking in public and her acquaintances with men outside her family circle.
‘Honour killing’ is the term used to describe killings motivated by a perceived transgression of cultural norms.
In Germany it is normally associated with the country’s Turkish and Middle Eastern minorities.