MANILA – The female employer of slain Ilongga overseas Filipino worker (OFW) Joanna Demafelis in Kuwait has been convicted for murder by the Syrian District Criminal Court, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said.
Syrian Mona Ali Hassoun was pronounced guilty for the death of Demafelis whose body was stuffed in an apartment freezer in Kuwait in February last year.
This was Hassoun’s second conviction for Demafelis’ death. She and Lebanese husband Nader Essam Assaf were found guilty for the crime, too, by a Kuwaiti court in April 2018 and sentenced to death in absentia. The couple already fled Kuwait when the murder was discovered.
Assaf was also charged with murder for the crime in his home country Lebanon.
“DFA will continue to provide legal assistance to the family until justice is served,” read part of DFA’s statement released yesterday.
Demafelis, a resident of Sitio Cordero, Barangay Ferraris, Sara, Iloilo, was found frozen inside the abandoned apartment of Hassoun and her husband in Al-Shaab, Kuwait in Feb. 6, 2018.
Autopsy showed she was beaten and tortured repeatedly, and that she was already dead when stored in the freezer.
The discovery of her body, believed to have been frozen for more than a year, sparked outrage in the country and led to a temporary deployment ban of new Filipino workers to Kuwait.
The domestic helper had several broken ribs and contusions and trauma in the pelvis and kidney area. She also suffered from internal bleeding.
The Kuwaiti authorities who stumbled upon the frozen corpse were originally tasked to serve a court order to evict the apartment tenant.
The 40-year-old Assaf turned out to be a fugitive with cases related to falsified cheques. He was arrested in Lebanon on Feb. 22, 2018.
Kuwaiti authorities sought Interpol’s help in locating him and his wife.
Demafelis’ last contact with her family was in May 2016. She told them she wanted to extend her stay in Kuwait.
Then 26 years old, Demafelis left the country for Kuwait on May 18, 2014 six months after super typhoon “Yolanda” struck.
She wanted to rebuild their house that “Yolanda” destroyed, according to her mother Eva.
Her daughter also dreamed of putting up a sari-sari store, she revealed.
“She did not want me to work in the rice field anymore,” said Eva, a farmhand./PN
