GENOA – Javier Napoleon Pareja Gamboa, a 52-year-old man from Ecuador, has been sentenced to 16 years in prison for the murder of his wife Jenny Angela Coello Reyes, as opposed to the 30-year sentence requested by the prosecutor.

 Pareja Gamboa killed his 46-year-old partner with several stab wounds to the chest in April 2018, after discovering that she had not left her lover in Genoa as promised.

 After recognising the mitigating circumstance that the man was “disappointed” after his wife failed to leave her lover, the judge decided to reduce Pareja Gamboa's sentence given his view that disputes, his wife's insults and lies, helped push the man to violence.

 The sentence's explanation outlined that the man stabbed her “because he was motivated by a mixture of anger and desperation, profound disappointment and resentment.”

 However, the victim's lawyer Giuseppe Maria Gallo criticised that “honour killings have been resurrected with this sentence explanation."

 Interior Minister Matteo Salvini also commented on the verdict, expressing his outrage; “I have no words, there is no disappointment and jealousy that can justify a murder. Those who kill in this way must rot in jail.”

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