A young Omani woman was stabbed to death by a citizen in Ibri, Al Dhahirah Governorate, the second such incident in less than a week.
While Royal Oman Police confirmed the suspect’s arrest, it did not reveal the details or the possible motive behind the incident.
Last week, a citizen was arrested on charges of assaulting a woman with a white weapon in the Wilayat of Al Seeb because of a family dispute between them.
Commenting on the cases, Dr. Hamed al Sinawi, a consultant psychiatrist at Sultan Qaboos University Hospital, said, “Crime is a complex behavior that is often caused by social, psychological, and political factors.
“Some people jump to the assumption that people who commit crimes have some form of a mental illness which is not always the case.”
Al Sinawi said, “Several international studies have been conducted on this matter and as per one study, up to 80 percent of people who have committed the crime have reported no mental illness.”
If we analyze motives behind committing such crimes in general, reasons can be related to stress, jealousy, and general feelings of frustration, he said. He added, “We should not analyse the incident without having details, but as per social media reports, the victims and the perpetrators of the Crime were connected. The killing was either planned or pre-meditated, possibly under the influence of extreme anger.” The fact that incidents took place in the presence of others in broad daylight might suggest the accused had poor impulse control or was unable to control anger which led to the killings. “This does not necessarily mean that the perpetrators of the crime were suffering from any kind of mental illness.”
Al Sinawi said that in similar cases reported in other countries, the common reasons are that the victim rejected the marriage proposal from the killer, who felt humiliated, which led him to lose control of his thought process. “In some cases, people commit the Crime under the use of substances or alcohol, which can impair the judgment process. He feared random posting of such incidents on social media might lead the crime to be repeated by others who harbor or have similar intentions. Crime is often the outcome of strong emotions linked to events such as jealousy, cheating on the partner, love, and hate, among others. Such crimes may also be an outcome of a long period of domestic violence in which a person has been physically and emotionally abused by the partner. It may be noted that 3,837 divorces were registered in 2021 in the Sultanate of Oman, compared to 19,294 marriages.
