An Egyptian woman, identified simply as Hanaa, has been arrested for hacking her 5-year-old son, Youssef, to death with a machete and then cooking and eating part of his head.
The 29-year-old was apprehended by the police after the boy’s horrified uncle found body parts in buckets at their home in Abu Shalabi, Egypt.
According to local Egyptian media, Hanaa confessed to the police that she ate part of her son’s head because she “wanted him to stay with her forever”.
She reportedly killed the boy with four blows to the head before butchering his body in the bathroom. Then, she allegedly cooked his head and other parts of his flesh in boiling water before eating them.
Following her arrest, she claimed to be suffering from a mental illness and did not mean to kill her son.
Hanaa and her son were said to have been living together after her divorce from her husband, who insists that she murdered their son on purpose.
The ex-husband, while speaking to a local news outlet, said, “When I arrived, the police prevented me from seeing my son because of the horrific scene.”
He explained: “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.”
“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 okay.”
His lawyer, Samir Mohamed Saleh, said the suspect was emotionless when she told her interrogators that she wanted to ‘free herself and her son’
“I wanted to take revenge against his father and be free. His father keeps coming and trying to take him away all the time”, she was quoted as saying.
In the mean time, the suspect has been taken into custody and would undergo a mental health assessment to determine her mental status.
