Damascus - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad issued a decree changing the penalty for "honour killing" to at least two years in prison, Minister of Justice Minister Ahmad Hamoud Younes said in a statement Thursday. "The number of wife-killings has increased recently on the pretext of adultery, and the article that was abolished by the President pardoned these crimes," the official SANA news agency quoted Younes as saying.
The new law reads: "He who catches his wife, sister, daughter or mother by surprise in the act of committing adultery or having unlawful sex with another and then unintentionally kills or hurts either of them can benefit from attenuating circumstances, provided that he serves a prison term of no less than two years in the case of killing."
Women rights groups welcomed the change with reservations.
"This is only a small contribution to solving this problem, for in this new version too the paragraph still invites murder," said Women of Syria group in a statement on its website.
"The new law still leaves a wide door open for the killers. Who gave men the right to kill women?" the statement added.
Last May a Syrian court sentenced a man who deliberately killed his sister and her lover to only only seven and a half years in prison, as the case was considered an "honour killing."
