Egyptian Mother Declared Insane After Decapitating Son With Machete and Eating His Head; Claims She Wanted Her Son To Be With Her Forever
A court in Egypt has deemed a mother criminally insane for using a machete to decapitate her five-year-old son and eating his head.
Hanaa Mohamed Hassan, the 29-year-old accused of the horrific murder of her son Youssef, was not permitted to enter a plea, according to the judges.
Instead, they concluded in a decision made public on September 30 that she had killed the boy “in a state of madness” and should be held in a secure mental hospital.
According to testimony given in front of the Criminal Court of Zagazig, Hassan was apprehended after Youssef’s horrified uncle discovered some of his body parts in a bucket at the family home in Faqus, northern Egypt.
Police reported that after being apprehended, the woman admitted to eating a portion of her son’s head because she “wanted him to stay with her forever.”
His head and other pieces of his body had been stewed in boiling water on the stove after she had butchered his body in the bathroom.
Prosecutors had argued before the decision that Hassan killed her son because she feared giving her ex-husband custody of the child.
An initial psychiatric assessment had also determined that she was accountable for her deeds, which were planned out because she had secured a club and a machete and secured her home’s windows and doors.
After killing her son with three blows to the head, she dismembered his body in an effort to obliterate any potential proof.
A panel of psychiatric experts appointed by the court conducted a more thorough evaluation of Hassan’s mental state, and they concluded that she was “delusional” and had irrational beliefs that her son’s family members were using sorcery against him.
According to the report, Hassan had poor judgement and insight, and she failed to recognise the gravity of her actions. She thought the killings were just an error.
At the Abbasiya Mental and Neurological Health Hospital in Cairo, Hassan was to be detained, per court order.
Hassan told the police in Faqus after being detained that she “suffers from a mental illness” and hadn’t intended to kill her son.
After her separation from her husband, who maintains she knew exactly what she was doing, she and Youssef had been living alone.
The ex-husband, who gave only his initials H.A. as a means of identification, told local media: “When I came, the cops prohibited me from seeing my son due to the awful scene. We separated from each other four years ago because she had land from her father and asked me to leave the house and my family and go with her to live on the land. But I refused, and the relationship ended entirely by her will, and I tried to reconcile with her after the divorce, but she refused and stuck to her opinion.’
He added, ‘My son was the one who kept me connected to her, and I used to see him regularly and bring him clothes and things he needed.
‘But recently she was trying to keep him away from me and plant hatred towards me in his heart, so he wouldn’t come to me.
‘I was trying to communicate with her family to see my son and make sure he was OK.’
She told her interrogators, “I wanted to free him and myself,” but the suspect was expressionless, according to his attorney, Samir Mohamed Saleh.
‘I wanted to take revenge against his father and be free. His father keeps coming and trying to take him away all the time.’
