On Wednesday (22nd November), the Joint Jury Court of Athens sentenced a 23-year-old Pakistani asylum seeker to life imprisonment for the murder of his Greek girlfriend in 2022. The convict, Munasif Ashan told the court that he killed his 17-year-old girlfriend because she “insulted Prophet Muhammad”.
The distressed family of the minor victim reportedly yelled at the murderer inside the courtroom and also tried to hit him. The father of 17-year-old Nicoletta, who was discovered dead in her home in the Peristeri neighborhood of western Athens, had requested the death sentence as a fitting retribution for the killer of his daughter.
The Pakistani accused was found guilty of murder in the unanimous ruling.
In his testimony, Munasif Ashan stated that he was in a relationship with the deceased for almost one and a half years. He said that his decision to leave Greece and go to Italy was because of a fight between the couple.
He claimed that the deceased girl had asked him to embrace Christianity and had insulted the Islamic Prophet Muhammad during an argument.
“I tried to leave and she started throwing my clothes. I told her to sit on the bed, she started cursing me and cursing Muhammad. I pushed her off the bed and told her to stay there. She kept cursing me and Muhammad, and I got angry. I grabbed her by the neck and said, ‘Who is telling you such things all the time? I’m listening to you.’ I grabbed her at that time by the head and told her to apologise,” the murderer said.
He further said, “She grabbed my hand and told me to let her go. I didn’t let her go and kept telling her to apologise. After some seconds, I saw that her eyes were closed. Then I gave her water, gave her air. I was nervous and left the house. I took my things and left the house. I went to my brother to get some money and went to Larissa Station to catch the train to Thessaloniki.”
The Pakistani youth found out about his girlfriend’s death on the next day from the internet. As soon as he read the news, he contacted his fellow Pakistanis to leave the country, Greek media had reported.
He said, “The next day I knew from the Internet. I called my father and told him that I made a mistake. He asked me what happened and I told him about the girl. He got mad and hung up on me. Then I found a compatriot who worked for immigrants, and I told him I wanted to leave, and he helped me.”
Tension could be felt in the courtroom from the beginning to the end. After the hearing, the victim’s father burst out at the convict. He shouted, “Don’t look at me at all, rot in prison.” To calm him down, the police took him from the courtroom.
He said, “To lose my daughter in a car accident, I understand that, but to lose her in this way to have her strangled?” Notably, the victim’s parents had been against Nicoleta’s relationship with the Pakistani man.
Repoirts stated that the victim girl wanted to break up with the Pakistani Munasif Ashan. She had communicated the same a week before her murder. The communications in the seized mobile phone of the victim revealed that Munasif had issued her multiple death threats.
According to the postmortem results, the Pakistani purportedly suffocated his 17-year-old girlfriend with his hands. He reportedly crushed her nose and head with his left hand, leaving scratches, bruises and abrasions on her face. He is suspected to have used a cloth to seal her lips with his right hand.
Shockingly, upon his arrest, several identity cards were found in Munasif’s possession consisting of different dates of birth and names. The Greek authorities had listed the accused for deportation in 2021 but they released him from the migrant camp during a ‘decongestion’ drive.
During interrogation, he revealed that he wanted to get married to Nicoletta and had plans to have the wedding in Italy. He was asking Nicoletta to help him with his asylum application and she refused. Nicoletta reportedly asked him to become a Christian and ‘spoke badly of the Quran’, as per the murderer’s claims.