A teenager died after she was tied up and thrown into a swamp to drown in an honour killing because her Western behaviour shamed her family, according to prosecutors in the Netherlands.
Ryan Al Najjar’s brothers have now been put on trial for her murder, while her father, who is accused of ordering the killing, fled the country to return to Syria.
Mohamed, 23, and Muhanad Al Najjar, 25, are charged with taking part in the horrific crime against their 18-year-old sister, whose body was found gagged with her hands bound behind her back, ankles taped together, and submerged in a swamp six days after she vanished from the family home in Joure.
Their father, Khaled, will be tried in absentia. Ryan disappeared on May 22, 2024. A passerby discovered her body on May 28 in Lelystad, about 25 miles north-east of Amsterdam.
Investigators later found DNA belonging to her father under her fingernails, indicating that she had put up a fight.
Dutch prosecutors say Ryan was murdered because she had a boyfriend, behaved in a way her family considered ‘Western,’ and had ‘shamed’ them.
The Public Prosecution Service formally designated her killing as an honour crime.
The brothers, whose trial began yesterday, insist they were not involved and say their father carried out the murder alone.
Khaled allegedly sent two emails to Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf claiming responsibility and saying his sons were innocent. Prosecutors, however, rejected that claim.
They argue that the father told his sons to collect Ryan, drive her to an isolated location, and throw her into the water while she was gagged and weighed down.
The prosecution says the brothers carried out the plan knowing she would die.
Before her death, Ryan was being monitored by the police and was given protection, but that was ended prior to her murder. It has not been revealed why her protection was discontinued.
Both brothers were arrested shortly after the body was located and have remained in custody since then. Their father fled the country and has not been tracked down.
According to the Dutch current-affairs programme Nieuwsuur, Khaled is believed to be living in northern Syria and has remarried since the killing.
The Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security told the programme that the Netherlands currently has no way to secure his return.
‘The possibilities for criminal cooperation with Syria are currently not available,’ the Ministry said. ‘The criminal justice authorities required for this cooperation are not [yet] operational in Syria.’
However, Syria’s own Ministry of Justice has disputed that assertion. Minister Mazhar al-Wais said the system had been rebuilt and was functioning.
‘That may have been the case in the beginning when the regime had just fallen. Now the Syrian justice system has been fully restored,’ he said.
He said the country was ‘ready’, adding that Syria has already received three legal-assistance requests from European nations.
‘We will provide the necessary legal assistance in accordance with the regulations.’
The Syrian minister also said his government had never received a request from the Netherlands regarding this case.
The brothers’ lawyers had earlier requested that they be released from pre-trial custody. But a judge ruled that they must be held behind bars until their trial.
It has been estimated that cops in the Netherlands provide heavy protection to at least five women per year at risk of honour killings.
Reports from various countries have shown that there has been an increase in honour killings and abuses in Europe over the last twenty to thirty years.
In 2023, a Pakistani couple accused of murdering their 18-year-old daughter after she rejected their demands to marry her cousin were jailed for life in Italy.
Investigators dug up Saman Abbas’ body in November 2022 in an abandoned farmhouse near the fields where her father worked. She was found to have suffered a broken neck.
A year and a half before the discovery, she was last seen alive on CCTV footage walking around the same fields with her parents.
Last year, a Swedish court jailed a Somalian refugee for life after he murdered his seven-months-pregnant girlfriend in 2023.
Saga Forsgren Elneborg, 20, was murdered by her boyfriend, Mohamedamin Abdirisek Ibrahim, who decided to kill her instead of facing the shame of telling his Muslim family that he was expecting a baby with her.
Prosecutors say he strangled her at their home in the city of Örebro in April 2023, in a case that sparked a huge outcry in Sweden.
In Germany, a Muslim mother and father who killed their daughter, 19, after she brought ‘shame’ on the family because she had sex with a 23-year-old man they did not approve of, were also jailed for life.
Azadullah Khan crept into his daughter, Lareeb’s, room as she slept and strangled her while her mother, Shazia, looked on. They then disposed of her body.
The couple, who are from Pakistan, had intended to give Lareeb away in an arranged marriage. They killed her when the police wrote to them to let them know their daughter had been caught trying to steal condoms.
