Murder of female student raises university safety concerns

The shooting death of a female student inside her university campus on Thursday 23 June shocked Jordanians. The murder came three days after an Egyptian female student lost her life at the hands of a colleague, writes Daoud Kuttab for The Media Line.

Eman Irshed, a nursing student at Applied Science University in the Shafa Badran suburb of Amman, was killed by a non-student who had been seeking to marry her. In a recorded message, he said that if she did not accept to go out with him, he would kill her. When police tracked down the alleged killer, surrounding him on Sunday, he killed himself before he could be arrested.

Kristen Batarseh, a postgraduate student in human rights and human development at the University of Jordan, told The Media Line that being a student is scary these days. “Our universities are not safe. The university security guards never check students coming in and there are plenty of students who have weapons inside the campus. A few years ago, during student council elections, a student shot another student in the foot. I remember they closed the university and asked us all to leave,” she said.
Full report on The Jerusalem Post site