The father and brothers of Arooj and Aneesa, two sisters from Terrassa who were killed in Pakistan in 2022, face proceedings in Spain over alleged forced marriage and confinement. Prosecutors also allege habitual abuse and coercion. Spanish prosecutors are seeking 14 years in prison for their father, Ghulam Abbas; the brothers face requests for 14 and eight years, respectively. These are prosecutors’ requested sentences, not court-imposed punishments. The Spanish case concerns alleged conduct in Spain and is separate from the Pakistani proceedings over the killings.
Information from the investigation, the sisters’ only respite from their restrictive home life was occasional work at the family supermarket, where their father kept a close watch. At home, they were reportedly locked in when left alone, with their brothers’ help. Prosecutors allege a pattern of habitual mistreatment and coercion that severely limited the sisters’ autonomy.
In 2022, Arooj and Aneesa were taken to their native village in Gujrat, Pakistan, on the pretext that their mother was ill. Six close relatives killed them there, including their brothers Shehryar and Asfandyar, allegedly with their father’s knowledge. The sisters had previously been forced to marry cousins against their will and refused to help their husbands obtain legal residency in Spain, a refusal investigators believe was connected to the killings.
Pakistani courts acquitted the accused after the victims’ parents forgave the perpetrators, invoking a legal mechanism that can affect prosecution in certain murder cases. The proceedings in Spain focus on allegations that the sisters were forced into marriage and subjected to habitual abuse. Prosecutors also allege coercion. The distinction matters: Spain’s prosecution concerns alleged acts committed there, rather than serving as a retrial of the murders prosecuted in Pakistan.
After the killings, the Abbas family left Terrassa and relocated to Vinaròs, Castellón. The mother, Mirza Salman, who reportedly witnessed the killings, returned to Spain and briefly stayed in a shelter before rejoining her husband. Both sons also returned to Spain after being released in Pakistan. One of them, Asfandyar, has since become a social media influencer with a large following on TikTok.
The case highlights the difficulties that arise when alleged abuse in one country is followed by killings and criminal proceedings in another. Spain has an official inter-agency protocol for assisting Spanish women experiencing gender violence abroad, while questions of jurisdiction and cooperation between legal systems remain impressive in cross-border cases. The existence of that protocol does not itself determine how a particular case is handled.
National figures offer broader context on gender violence in Spain, but do not make this case representative of any migrant, ethnic or religious community. In the second quarter of 2026, specialized courts recorded 55,712 gender-violence complaints and 50,106 women victims nationwide, increases of 9.81% and 7.64%, respectively, compared with the same quarter a year earlier, according to data from the General Council of the Judiciary. Foreign nationals accounted for 37.91% of the women recorded as victims; the national rate was 20 women per 10,000. These figures describe reported cases and victims, not the causes of violence or the circumstances of individual families.
The Abbas case is not the only instance in which family tragedy has intersected with legal complexity in Spain. In Benidorm, for example, police recently traced relatives after finding a funeral urn in a supermarket locker, as reported in a related incident involving family and legal procedures.
The Spanish trial will address the alleged conduct within its jurisdiction, including forced marriage and mistreatment, while the killings were dealt with in Pakistan. The case shows how separate legal proceedings can leave different parts of a cross-border family-violence case to be addressed by different justice systems.
