A mother who decapitated her five-year-old son with a machete and ate his head has been declared criminally insane by a court in Egypt.
The unusual murder
Accused Hanaa Mohamed Hassan, 29, was on trial for her son Youssef’s gruesome murder but judges ruled she was not fit to plead.
Instead, in a verdict revealed on September 30, they said she had killed the boy ‘in a state of madness‘ and should be detained at a secure psychiatric unit.
Hassan was caught after Youssef’s horrified uncle found some of his body parts in a bucket at the family home in Faqus, northern Egypt, the Criminal Court of Zagazig heard.
Following her arrest, police said she confessed that she had eaten part of her son’s head because she ‘wanted him to stay with her forever’.
She had butchered his body in the bathroom before she stewed his head and other pieces of his flesh in boiling water on the stove and then ate them.
Why did Hanaa Hassan decapitated her son?
Before the ruling, prosecutors had argued that Hassan had killed her son because she feared she might lose custody of the boy to her ex-husband.
An initial psychiatric report had also found that she was responsible for her actions, which were premeditated as she had obtained a club and a machete and locked all the doors and windows in her home.
She had then struck her son’s head three times, killing him, and had then chopped his body into pieces in a bid to destroy the evidence.
But the court ordered a more detailed assessment of her mental state, and a panel of court-appointed psychiatric experts found that Hassan was ‘delusional’ and had wild notions that relatives were using sorcery against her son.
The report said Hassan suffered from impaired insight and judgment and did not appreciate the seriousness of her actions.
She viewed the slaughter as a simple mistake.
Hassan was ordered to be detained at the Abbasiya Mental and Neurological Health Hospital in Cairo.
After her arrest, Hassan claimed to the police in Faqus that she ‘suffers from a mental illness’ and had not intended to kill her son.
She and Youssef had been living alone after she separated from her husband, who insists she knew exactly what she was doing.
