On May 28, 2024, the body of 18-year-old Syrian-Dutch teenager Rayan Al-Najjar was found at the bottom of a shallow, crystal-clear lake in the Oostvaardersplassen Nature Reserve near Lelystad in central Netherlands.
Her wrists and ankles had been bound, and her mouth sealed with adhesive tape. Investigators estimated that a total of 18 meters of tape had been used.
According to forensic experts who examined the body, Rayan had been restrained in this manner and subjected to an attempted strangulation before being thrown into the water, where she ultimately drowned. Investigators believe the killing took place late on the night of May 22, 2024, six days before her body was discovered in the nature reserve’s lake.
An “Honor” Killing
The Dutch police investigation moved swiftly. Authorities reviewed Rayan’s smartphone activity and digital footprint in the period leading up to her death, analyzing communications, text and voice messages, photographs, and other digital materials.
The investigation quickly identified three suspects: Rayan’s father, Khaled Al-Najjar, 53, and her two brothers, Mohannad Al-Najjar, 25, and Mohammad Ali Al-Najjar, 23. In other words, all the adult male members of Rayan’s immediate family became the focus of the inquiry.
Rayan arrived in the Netherlands with her family at the age of ten, between 2015 and 2016, following a brief stay in Turkey after being displaced by the war in their native Syria. In 2017, the Al-Najjar family was granted asylum and legal residency in the Netherlands, as were many other Syrian refugees who had reached the country. They were assigned housing in the northern Frisian town of Joure, where they settled and began rebuilding their lives.
Yet Rayan’s life within her immediate family was far from the stability and tranquility suggested by the quiet surroundings of the small Dutch town. As she entered her teenage years, her situation at home steadily deteriorated.
Investigators found that, for years, she had been subjected to harassment, pressure, and threats, particularly from the male members of her family. The tensions centered on her social media activity, where she appeared in photos and videos without a headscarf, as well as on her refusal to comply with family demands regarding dress and behavior. She chose not to wear the hijab in public and increasingly embraced a lifestyle that her family described as “Western.” According to the investigation, this perceived defiance gradually came to be viewed by her relatives as an intolerable burden, one they believed they could no longer accept.
According to the police investigation, Rayan repeatedly sought help from local Dutch organizations that support and protect vulnerable young women, asking for assistance and protection from the pressures she faced at home.
The situation reached a breaking point during the final week of her life, prompting her to leave the family home and seek refuge with friends in Rotterdam.
On May 22, her father and two brothers located her after contacting her by phone. Investigators believe that it was at this point that the family’s plan to lure Rayan back and ultimately kill her was set in motion.
That evening, brothers Mohammad and Mohannad drove to Rotterdam and contacted their sister. They persuaded her to get into the car and return home with them, a decision that would prove fatal.
From Rotterdam to the Crime Scene
That evening, Rayan agreed to accompany her two brothers. But the journey did not lead back to the family home in Joure, as they had promised. Instead, it took her to an area near the city of Lelystad, unknowingly bringing her to the penultimate stop of her life.
There, during a brief stop, their father, Khaled Al-Najjar, was waiting and joined them. Under the cover of darkness, the group drove another 9.5 kilometers, a journey that took roughly fifteen minutes, before arriving at the Oostvaardersplassen Nature Reserve.
Spanning 56 square kilometers, the reserve is one of the Netherlands’ largest rewilding projects, designed to restore natural ecosystems to a heavily developed landscape. At night, the protected area is largely deserted, far removed from residential neighborhoods and absent of the hikers, birdwatchers, and nature enthusiasts who frequent it during the day.
In a secluded section of the reserve, centered around a shallow lake bordered by sandy banks, Khaled Al-Najjar and his two sons chose to carry out the killing.
There, in the depths of the wilderness and under the cover of night, Rayan found herself alone with the men of her family, driven by a desire for vengeance in the name of what they believed to be their “honor.”
Arrests and Trial
Within days of the discovery of Rayan’s body, and following a rapid police investigation, Dutch prosecutors formally charged her father, Khaled Al-Najjar, and her two brothers, Mohannad and Mohammad Al-Najjar, with murder.
Police, however, were only able to arrest the two brothers. Their father had left the Netherlands immediately after the killing and returned to his native Syria.
On January 5, 2025, a court in Lelystad delivered its verdicts. Khaled Al-Najjar was sentenced in absentia to 25 years in prison, while both Mohammad Ali Al-Najjar and Mohannad Al-Najjar received 20-year prison sentences.
Khaled is unlikely to serve his sentence. After returning to Syria, he reportedly remarried and began a new life there. The Netherlands and Syria do not have an extradition treaty, making it highly improbable that he will be returned to face imprisonment.
The trial in Lelystad, both through its proceedings and its verdicts, raised a series of questions that many in the Netherlands viewed as relatively new to the country’s criminal justice landscape. More than the prosecution of a single murder, the case was seen by some observers as one of the clearest indications that so-called honor crimes may no longer be understood merely as isolated acts of violence, each with its own circumstances, but as crimes embedded within broader social structures that can enable and sustain them.
The case highlighted the role of interconnected family, social, and cultural dynamics in the planning and execution of the killing. Prosecutors argued that Khaled Al-Najjar personally restrained his daughter and attempted to strangle her before, together with his two sons, throwing her into the lake while bound, resulting in her death. Investigators found traces of his DNA beneath Rayan’s fingernails and on the adhesive tape used to bind her hands and feet and cover her mouth.
The two brothers, meanwhile, were found to have played supporting roles in the crime. According to the investigation, they tracked down their sister, lured her into the vehicle, and later attempted to destroy evidence. Investigators said the brothers deleted messages and communications with the victim from their phones and sought to remove traces of those exchanges from a wider circle of contacts, most of them family members. They also reviewed and cleaned digital accounts and social media records connected to the case.
The level of coordination revealed by the investigation suggested a highly organized effort, one that also facilitated Khaled Al-Najjar’s rapid departure from the Netherlands. After reaching Syria, where he was beyond the reach of Dutch authorities, and after Rayan’s body had been discovered in the nature reserve, he reportedly sent a message to a Dutch newspaper in which he personally claimed responsibility for the killing, while attempting to minimize the involvement of his two sons.
These elements ultimately formed the foundation of the defense strategy presented during the trial. The argument rested on portraying the father as the sole driving force behind the crime, while minimizing the responsibility of everyone else involved.
The testimony of the two brothers, Mohammad and Mohannad, followed this line closely. Both described their father as someone who became uncontrollable when he believed his honor had been violated. “When our father is angry over something that affects his honor, he becomes a monster that cannot be restrained,” they told the court.
The victim’s mother offered a similar account, testifying that her husband would turn into “a monster” whenever he felt his honor had been wounded. Rayan’s two sisters echoed the same narrative, describing their father as someone transformed by extreme anger.
In many ways, Khaled Al-Najjar appeared to continue exercising authority even from afar. Having orchestrated the killing and escaped to Syria, he remained the dominant figure around whom the defense was built. As long as he remained beyond the reach of Dutch authorities, he could be presented as the principal culprit, absorbing responsibility for the crime and shielding the two sons standing before the court.
To some extent, the strategy proved effective. Despite their central role in locating, luring, and assisting in the killing of their sister, Mohammad and Mohannad were portrayed as obedient sons acting under the influence of a domineering father. This framing helped reduce their legal culpability relative to his.
Several Dutch citizens interviewed by the author, most of them from liberal circles generally skeptical of harsh sentencing and mass incarceration, expressed concern that the 20-year prison terms handed to the brothers were too lenient. In their view, the two men had played a decisive role in the destruction of their own family by helping kill its youngest daughter. Yet they would spend two decades in a Dutch prison system often regarded as comparatively humane, and would be released in their forties with much of their lives still ahead of them.
For some observers, this raised an unsettling question: whether the social attitudes that motivated the crime had truly been addressed, or merely postponed until the brothers eventually returned to society.
Honor in the Land of Migration
The social structures that sustain so-called honor crimes have become sufficiently established in the Netherlands that authorities now treat honor-related violence as a distinct category within the country’s homicide and violent crime landscape, rather than as a series of isolated incidents.
As a result, honor-based violence is increasingly understood as a phenomenon with its own social dynamics, family networks, cultural dimensions, and patterns of escalation. Dutch institutions have developed specialized mechanisms to monitor and analyze these cases, recognizing that they often involve collective pressures and multiple actors rather than a single perpetrator acting alone.
For several years, the Netherlands has published an annual report prepared by the National Expertise Center on Honor-Related Violence, which tracks cases, identifies trends, and examines the evolving nature of honor-based violence across the country.
The annual report is produced by the Dutch National Expertise Center on Honor-Related Violence (Landelijk Expertise Centrum Eergerelateerd Geweld), which collects data on honor-related crimes and tracks developments, trends, and victim numbers across the country.
The center’s latest report, covering 2025, was released last month and received attention in the Dutch press. According to the report, the center handled 757 cases of honor-related violence in 2025, representing a 13 percent increase compared with the previous year.
The report also highlighted a steady rise in reported cases over the past four years:
594 cases in 2022
619 cases in 2023
673 cases in 2024
757 cases in 2025
The figures point to a continuing upward trend, suggesting that honor-related violence remains a persistent and growing concern for Dutch authorities and support organizations.
Despite the clear upward trend in reported cases, the number of completed honor killings has actually declined.
According to the 2025 report, four honor-related murders were recorded last year, a figure significantly lower than in previous years, when the annual number typically ranged between 10 and 15 killings.
This contrast between the rising number of reported cases and the declining number of murders may point to growing awareness among potential victims and those at risk of honor-based violence. It also suggests that more women are seeking help and reporting threats at an earlier stage, allowing authorities and support services to intervene before violence escalates into lethal crimes.
In that sense, the increase in reported cases may not necessarily reflect a rise in violence itself, but rather an improvement in detection, reporting mechanisms, and access to protection for those facing honor-related threats.
The report also notes that the overwhelming majority of honor-related violence cases, if not all of them, occur within immigrant communities, particularly among more recent arrivals to the Netherlands.
In 2025, people of Syrian origin accounted for the largest share of honor-related violence cases, representing roughly one-third of the total. Individuals of Turkish origin ranked second. Most of these cases involved abuse, intimidation, and threats rather than homicide.
According to Wilfried Janmaat, head of the National Expertise Center on Honor-Related Violence, who spoke to the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant in March 2026, honor-related violence typically emerges when a girl or woman makes choices that diverge from the social and family norms prevailing within her community.
Such choices may include entering a relationship before marriage, removing or refusing to wear the hijab, identifying as LGBTQ+, or seeking a divorce.
Janmaat argues that intergenerational tensions are particularly pronounced among newly arrived migrant families. Younger family members tend to integrate into Dutch society more quickly than their parents. They attend Dutch schools, form friendships with Dutch peers, make different life choices, and gradually adopt the values and social norms of the surrounding society. In doing so, they often come into conflict with the more traditional expectations held by their families, creating tensions that can, in some cases, escalate into honor-related violence.
In the same context, the relatively high number of honor-related violence cases among Syrian immigrants can be partly attributed to the fact that Syrians constitute one of the newest migrant communities in the Netherlands. Many arrived only within the past decade, and a significant portion are still navigating the process of social and cultural integration into Dutch society.
By comparison, honor-related violence rates among Dutch residents of Turkish and Moroccan origin, whose communities have a much longer history in the Netherlands, have remained relatively stable and have not shown the same level of year-on-year growth. This contrast suggests that the phenomenon may be linked, at least in part, to the challenges and tensions that often accompany the early stages of migration, settlement, and adaptation to a new social environment.
The Tip of the Iceberg
The National Expertise Center on Honor-Related Violence is a specialized Dutch government body that supports police services, immigration authorities, and settlement agencies, and assists local support organizations in responding to the complex challenges posed by honor-related violence in the Netherlands.
One such organization is Movisie, a social development and empowerment organization that provides support services across diverse communities. A significant part of its work involves encouraging victims, often within migrant communities, to overcome the barriers that prevent them from seeking help from protection agencies and public institutions.
Honor-related violence, as the case of Rayan Al-Najjar starkly demonstrated, rarely operates as an individual act. Rather, it is often embedded within tightly knit social and family structures that can be difficult to challenge or escape. Perpetrators may act collectively, while other family members become complicit, willingly or otherwise, under the weight of complex familial loyalties and pressures.
For many female victims, the obstacles are even greater. Some depend on male relatives or partners for residency status, legal documentation, or financial security. In some cases, those very individuals are the source of the abuse. As a result, reaching the police or support services before violence escalates can be extraordinarily difficult.
Organizations such as Movisie have shaped their approach around this understanding. Drawing on lessons from numerous cases, including the killing of Rayan Al-Najjar, they focus first and foremost on dismantling the barriers that isolate victims from protection networks.
Part of that effort involves engaging influential figures within communities where honor-related violence persists and creating spaces for dialogue around sensitive issues. The organization also relies on a range of creative approaches, including theatre and other performing arts, to open discussions about individual autonomy, the right to self-determination, domestic violence, and family control.
The underlying premise is that the cases reported to authorities may represent only a fraction of a much larger reality, making prevention, outreach, and early intervention just as important as criminal prosecution.
