Man found walking along streets of Tiberias holding decapitated head of wife
A man was arrested on suspicion of decapitating his ex-wife and burning the body in Tiberias on Wednesday.
Eyewitnesses said they saw the man walking in the street holding the victim’s head.
Police said they found the victim, 33, burned and headless in an apartment engulfed in flames on the northern city’s Nachmani Street.
At approximately noon, the police were notified about an apartment fire and alerted to an ultra-Orthodox man walking in the streets with his clothes stained in blood. The man was arrested shortly after police arrived.
An eyewitness told The Jerusalem Post’s sister publication Maariv: “A young ultra-Orthodox man was walking around the street with his wife’s head in his hands, covered in blood. No one understood what was going on and why he had so much blood on him. Only later did they realize he was holding the woman’s head.”
Maariv also reported that the man, 34, previously claimed to be the Messiah, and had visited a psychiatrist who concluded he was not a public danger.
Police are still investigating the incident and a gag order was placed on all details of the investigation. The suspect will be brought to the Nazareth Magistrate’s Court on
Thursday, where police are seeking to extend his remand.
Attorney Said Haddad, who is representing the suspect, said his client, who moved to Israel from Moldova, has a history of mental illness. “We are talking about a serious tragedy, we are requesting tomorrow that there will be a psychiatric evaluation done,” Haddad told the Post on Wednesday.
The couple has no children, according to police.
Joint List MK Aida Touma-Sliman, head of the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality, responded to the killing by saying the lack of a “national plan” to deal with the murder of women means that “women continue to pay the price with their blood and their lives.”
This comes amid a recent spate of domestic murders that have made headlines in the Israel. In one case, Nadav Sela is suspected of murdering his wife, two sons and another person in the northern town of Migdal late in January. Sela was indicted this month and has admitted to the crimes in court.
In another incident, women’s rights activist Siham Zabaraja was shot in her home in Lod on Sunday and died of her wounds on Tuesday. A gag order was issued on details of the investigation. •