Cleansing the Family Honour

More stuff about men killing women who don't behave properly:

A Jordanian criminal court has sentenced a 30-year- old Egyptian to only six months in prison for murdering his Jordanian wife for committing adultery last year, the Jordan Times reported Friday.

The court prosecutor had charged the suspect, whose identity was withheld, with premeditated murder, but the tribunal immediately reduced the charge to a misdemeanour because the defendant committed his crime in defence of "family honour," judicial sources said.

Another court also sentenced a 30-year-old mechanic to only three months in jail after finding him guilty of murdering his younger married sister, the paper said.

The man opened fire on his sister, headed to the nearest police station and turned himself in, claiming he killed her to "cleanse his family's honour" because she had been missing for over a week.

Jordanian law allows for sentences to be reduced when "family honour" is involved.

Efforts to impose harsher punishments for "honour killings" have been regularly defeated in the Jordanian parliament:

Islamists and conservatives opposed to the new law said it would encourage vice and destroy social values.

We certainly wouldn't want that.