AMMAN – Criminal Prosecutor Jihad Duradi on Thursday levelled murder and premeditated murder charges against six men in connection with the shooting death of their 22-year-old female relative, official sources said.

The victim, who had been married for two weeks, was gunned down in front of the Deir Alla governor’s office, allegedly by her 38-year-old uncle, an official source close to the investigations said.

Duradi charged the suspect, who claimed family honour as the motive behind the murder, with one count of premeditated murder, according to the source.

Five other people, including the victim’s father and three of her uncles were charged with complicity in premeditated murder, the source added.

The source said a few months before the incident, the victim’s family had suspicions that she was having an affair with a man in their village.

Two weeks ago, the source added, the victim’s family visited the family of the man and asked that the two be married to end the suspicions.

“Although the two got married, the victim’s family were not satisfied and threatened to kill her so she filed a complaint against them at the mayor’s office,” the source explained.

On Wednesday, the victim’s father visited his married daughter and convinced her to drop the complaint against her uncles to contain the problem and avoid further escalation, the source added.

The victim agreed and the following day she headed to the mayor’s office with her father and husband to drop charges against her uncles, the source said.

Before entering the office, the source said, her father lured her to a side road where her uncles were waiting.

“One of her uncles drew a gun and shot her repeatedly until he made sure she was dead,” according to the source.

Police patrols guarding the mayor’s office arrested the entire family, the source added.

The uncle confessed in front of Duradi and said he shot his niece to cleanse his family’s honour, claiming that he learnt just one day before that the victim was wed by her family to conceal an “illegitimate relationship”.

“The suspect said he asked her about her relationship with her husband before they got married and she told him she was free to do whatever she wanted and it was none of his business, so he became enraged and shot her,” the source said.

A postmortem was conducted on the victim at the National Institute of Forensic Medicine on Friday and pathologists extracted six bullets from the victim’s head.

The victim became the ninth woman reportedly murdered in the Kingdom in a so-called honour crime since the beginning of the year.

An average of 20 women are murdered in Jordan each year in family honour-related crimes.