A QUESTION OF HONOUR

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30951, 6 January 1966, Page 9

A QUESTION OF HONOUR

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright) ROME, January 5. Italy’s Minister of Justice, Mr Oronzo Reale, today promised to revise the country’s “crime of honour” law under which jealous husbands or angry fathers can escape with light sentences if they kill seducers of their womenfolk.

The law at present allows jealous husbands or angry

fathers to serve light sentences —of not more than seven years—if they kill such seducers.

Some say the law’s leniency is too tough on the seducers and that often the seduced are as much to blame.

Quick reaction came from Mr Giuseppe Bettiol, a Christian Democrat deputy who teaches law at Padua University.

“One cannot for any reason compare a common murderer with a murderer for an honourable cause,” he said. But as human life was always sacred, an increase in

penalties for honour crimes might be admissable. The advocates of change sprang to the defence of the Justice Minister’s revision plan. The honour law was “iniquitous, absurd and contradictory

. . . anachronistic and of feudal extraction ... an encouragement to crime,” a Socialist deputy claimed. The revision plan is due to come before the Italian Cabinet next month. The issue has become a burning one since a sensational court decision in Catania, Sicily, in December.

The court found that a schoolteacher, Gaetano Furnari, committed homicide for reasons of honour when he killed a university professor who seduced his daughter, and sentenced him to two years 11 months’ gaol. The daughter was aged 23.

Earthquake In Greece.—Reports indicated that more than 100 houses have been damaged in a violent earthquake in Corinth, 80 miles west of Athens, the Ministry of the Interior said.—Athens, January 5.