Murder cases within families — dangerous phenomenon which poses threat to society

MADINAH: News of domestic murder and violence has recently led the headlines of daily newspapers and social networking sites, citing a new and strange phenomenon in Saudi society, known for its extreme cohesion.
Security reports indicate that over the past year, the community has seen six similar cases in which relatives became victims, particularly parents, wives, brothers and uncles, where the offender killed the victim by using crude weapons or firearms.
Al-Madinah newspaper tackled the incidents within the family that have recently occurred in the community, with reactions from professionals, clerics and professors to find the reason or reasons that led these adolescents to commit these heinous crimes against their families and relatives mainly, and society in general. It also met with a group of psychologists, educators, media and law experts for a diagnosis of the extremists’ current situations, to reach solutions which could keep youths away from deviant thoughts and actions.
Judges and lawyers described targeting parents and relatives as “a dramatic evolution” in the deviant group’s crimes, where at the beginning they were targeting facilities and foreign residents or non-Muslims in the Kingdom, noting that there is nothing worse than turning against the parents, siblings, and shedding their blood.
Judge Sheikh Dr. Issa Al-Ghaith said: “In the beginning they were targeting foreign residents or non-Muslims in the Kingdom, because they didn’t feel safe having them in the Kingdom — they think that there cannot be two religions in the Arabian Peninsula. Then they moved to security men and then to all those who defend the country, and then to parents and relatives.”
Dr. Suhaila Hammad, a senior member of the National Society for Human Rights in the Kingdom confirmed that the society is ready to receive complaints of violence, which lies within the family, and noted that the society operates according to a series of measures in cooperation with the competent authorities to limit the commission of these types of incidents and crimes by broadcasting awareness messages directed to all segments of society.