Archive: jordan

4th January 2010
By: Brian Whitaker
The Jordan Times reports on the case of Ishara Hemanthi, a 23-year-old Sri Lankan domestic worker in Amman: "They would whip me with a phone cord or a water nozzle, and sometimes would pull my hair if I did not finish the tasks they had set for me during the day," she said, adding that she wanted… Read more
19th October 2009
By: Brian Whitaker
A 22-year-old Jordanian woman with stomach pains was taken to the doctor by her father and an uncle on Saturday. The doctor found she was pregnant. “On their way home, the father stabbed the girl with a sword 25 times in her stomach, killing her immediately as well as her unborn baby boy,” a police… Read more
13th October 2009
By: Brian Whitaker
A Jordanian man has been sentenced to 15 years in jail with hard labour for killing his sister “to cleanse his family's honour”. By Jordanian standards, the sentence is unusually tough – sentences in some previous cases have been as little as a few months. According to a court official quoted in… Read more
30th September 2009
By: Brian Whitaker
Three Jordanian brothers have been accused of murdering their 40-year-old sister because of her “bad reputation”, the Jordan Timesreports. The men killed the divorced mother of five after finding photos of her sitting with her alleged lover, police said. They stabbed her 15 times then set fire to… Read more
16th September 2009
By: Brian Whitaker
A Jordanian doctor could face legal action after reportedly abandoning his Indonesian maid near Directorate of Chest Diseases and Foreigners' Health after she developed tuberculosis. The 28-year-old woman was allegedly beaten by the doctor’s mother and received no wages during the 19 months that… Read more
2nd September 2009
By: Brian Whitaker
Following the imprisonment of an Egyptian poet for “insulting” President Mubarak (reported here in July), another Arab poet – this time in Jordan – is preparing himself for jail. Islam Samhan was arrested last October and charged him with insulting the prophets because of Quranic references in his… Read more
26th July 2009
By: Brian Whitaker
It’s beginning to look as if the Red-Dead Project – an imaginative (some would say fanciful) scheme to channel water from the Red Sea into the Dead Sea – may one day come to fruition. The Jordan Times reports that Egypt has dropped its reservations to the project, which was jointly agreed upon in… Read more