In Egypt, a woman eats her son's head; she was considered insane

A mother who beheaded her five-year-old son with a machete before cooking and eating his head, she was declared "criminally insane" by a court in Egypt. Hanaa Mohamed Hassan, 29, was on trial for the murder of her son Youssef, but judges at the Zagazig Criminal Court (in the north of the country) ruled that she was not fit to plead guilty.

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Instead, in a verdict revealed Saturday, They said she had killed the child "in a state of madness" and that she should be detained in a secure psychiatric unit,

Hanaa had been captured when Youssef's horrified uncle found some parts of her body in a bucket at the family home in the town of Faqous, the court heard. After her arrest, police said she confessed that he had eaten part of his son's head because "she wanted him to stay with her forever."

She had butchered his body in the bathroom before stewing his head and other pieces of meat in boiling water on the stove. Before the ruling, prosecutors had argued that Hanaa had killed her son because she feared losing custody of the child to her ex-husband.

An initial psychiatric report found that she was responsible for her actions that were considered premeditated., as he had obtained a club and a machete before locking all the doors and windows of his house. She then hit his son's head three times, killing him, and then cut Youssef's body into pieces in an attempt to destroy the evidence.

But the court ordered a more detailed evaluation of his mental state, and a panel of court-appointed psychiatric experts cHe concluded that Hanna was "delusional" and had wild notions that her relatives were using witchcraft. against his son.

The report said that Hanaa suffered from perception and judgment problems, and did not appreciate the seriousness of his actions. She saw the sickening slaughter as a simple mistake. Hassan was ordered detained at the Abbasia Neurological and Mental Health Hospital in Cairo.

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