CAIRO: The principal suspect in the gruesome killing of 10 people, including four children, in an Egyptian village in December 2005 was cleared of all charges by a court on Wednesday. Police had been investigating Mohammed Ali Abdel-Latif, 27, for the brutal murder of four men, two women and four children on Dec. 29 2005 in Beni Mazar, 225 km south of Cairo, The victims were found with body parts and genitalia missing. Their stomachs and throats had been slashed. Police had charged that Abdel-Latif was mentally disturbed and had claimed responsibility for the killings. Cairo s Abbasiyya mental hospital, however, reported that Abdel-Latif was mentally healthy. Court proceedings had taken a strange turn the day before. The court had heard evidence from the Head Coroner, Dr. Ayman Fouda who had confirmed that all the mutilations had been carried out by the same person, judging by the nature of the wounds and that it would have been impossible to transplant the torn-off genitalia to anyone else. The court also heard evidence that the murderer must have had a pathological sexual perversion. There had previously been evidence presented that Abdel-latif had undergone psychiatric treatment and that among other things, he had been diagnosed with split personality disorder. Things then took an odd turn. The defendant was asked to try on a shoe which had been admitted into evidence (it had been found at the home of the defendant and was later linked to the crimes.) When Abdel-Latif tried on the shoe, it didn't fit. After three attempts, the shoes that the defendant was wearing in court were examined. They were found to be a size 45, whereas the size of the show presented as evidence was a size 42. The following day, however, when a shoe expert was called in, the shoe did in fact fit the defendant. The killings had been particularly brutal in nature. The victims were six adults, three males and three females and four children, the eldest was 11 years old. When they were discovered, the victims were in a stage of recent rigor mortis, the faded blood splatter patterns indicated that they had bled to death. Some of the adults had defense cuts on their hands. The bodies had cuts on their heads and throats and the stomachs had been slashed. In the case of the males, both the adults and the children had had their genitalia removed. The women had their stomachs slashed open all the way back to the top of the rectum. The Head Coroner, Dr. Fouda said that the entire village had known that Abdel-Latif had mental problems - he had been undergoing treatment. However, the defendant's lawyer, Talaat El-Sadat pointed out that there was no evidence against the defendant - the witnesses had given contradictory statements and all of the evidence was circumstantial - much had been made of the defendant's mental history, he had no motive or indeed means of committing the crimes. He also questioned how anyone with diminished mental capacity would conceal weapons but not make any other attempts at concealing a crime, or escaping. The following day, the Forensics expert, Colonel Hassan Anwar testified that there had been no biological or physical evidence, since it was almost impossible to get fingerprints off the type of bricks and doors used in country houses. The lawyer for the defense refuted this, asked why a fingerprint expert hadn't accompanied the police to the scene of the crime and asked if they really thought that it would be possible for someone to clamber across the roofs of the neighboring houses without attracting attention or setting off the guard dogs, a fixture of villages. On a bizarre note, popular rumor has it, that the killings had been carried out by Israelis and that the genitalia had been taken back to their country. Agencies
