Adam’s Confessions Refuted [Archives:2000/27/Reportage]
Jalal Al Sharaabi
Yemen Times
Twenty one bodies were recovered at the morgue of the college of medicine, according to the primary report made by the German experts. The two bodies believed to be of Hosn and Zainab’s, two of the reported victims, are included. Most of the remainder bodies are of male dead people that were likely brought in for educational purposes, the report said. For the body parts found in the morgue they were said to belong to about 6 people. Other parts, a child, twins, were also found in basins full of formalin. The report also indicated that parts of about five bodies were chopped by an electric saw.
All the above facts disagree with confessions of the accused, Mohammed Adam specially those related to the way of raping and killing his victims in general and Hosn and Zainab in particular.
For his part, Mohammed Adam confessed of what the Germans reported.
The court screened 12 film, two of which were pornographic. The others included children, violence, wild animals’ movies which the accused said that they did not belong to him.
Magistrate, Yahya Al-Aslami, chairman of the court stressed the importance of accelerating the final report of the German experts who have taken some body parts to be examined in Germany due to lack of some substances in Yemen in order to determine the victims’ sex and dates of death. It is expected that the final report will remove the mystery of Adam’ confused and contradictory confessions.
Mr. Al-Aslami gave orders to re-translate the report which is made of 66 pages. The translation which was read for the first time on Saturday was only of 18 pages. On the other hand, General Mohammed Saleh Al-Hamdani, chairman of the criminal laboratory is to travel to Germany to fetch the final report and the human body parts taken there by the two German experts for examination in specialized laboratories in Germany.
According to the report, the body that is believed to be Hosn’s, belongs to a woman at the age of 20-25 years old. Her body was chopped by an electric saw after her death. The internal parts and organs were still there. The report also indicated that the victim was hit on the right side of her head with a flat instrument and lost her consciousness. Then she was choked until death. Contradictory to what the report of Dr. Mohammed Aqlan of the forensic medicine said about the head that was found next to the victim’s body, the Germans said that it belonged to the same victim.
As for Zainab’s body it was found that it belonged to a women of 20-30 years old. The body was chopped into 7 parts. The head, hands and legs were separated from the body. The lips, nose and the fingers were worn out. Human hair was found on the right hand. The sex organs, heart and the kidneys were not there. The victim received a hit with a round device on the back of her head resulting in an immediate death.
This goes against Adam’s confessions in connection with Zainab and Hosn’s death. Adam said that he anesthetized Hosn, choked her and chopped her. For Zainab he said that he punched her below her mouth to fall unconscious on the ground. Then he repeated what he did with Hosn.
The report stressed the importance of a laboratory examinations on a large number of parts, tissues and curl of hair to determine the age, sex of the victims as well as the date of there death. The court accepted to send more body organs to Germany for finalizing the final report that everybody seems to be eagerly awaiting.
On the other hand the report of the criminal laboratory showed that blood spots were found on the ground of the morgue, its door and equipment. In addition, the report listed the following things: a knife with blood spots, clothes of laboratory technicians, a piece of blue carpet with blood spots, curls of hair, make up, part of a necklace, 11 buttons of ‘Sharshaf’, a gown worn by Yemeni women when going out and copybooks.
The court also read out a report on the 12 films which were found inside the luggage of the accused in Sudan. However, he denied to have any connection with the films. Following this, the court allowed each representative of the case parties to watch the films and decided to hold the next session tomorrow.
Dr. Mohammed Al-Khateeb was doubtful about the bodies that were said to be of Hosn and Zainab’s. He also said that the confessions of Adam showed that he was either an innocent or a criminal that had committed more crimes than he confessed of. However, the magistrate said that it was the victims’ families who recognized their daughters’ bodies. He also said that Adam himself identified their bodies when taking them out of the place they were hidden in.
In an interview with Jalal Al-Sharaaby of the Yemen Times Dr. Al-Khateeb said that he was still unable to meet with the accused despite the permission he had got to do that. He said that new facts that may change the trend of the case would be revealed if he was allowed to meet with Adam. Below is the full interview with Dr. Al-Khateeb, the accused defense lawyer.
“This case was a little bit obscure from the very beginning because it was not given its due attention. The security bodies had a very limited time that did not exceed 24 hours to finalize their work in connection with the crime when it appeared. So, they only reported the situation as it was found to the Prosecution, which, unfortunately, did not try to investigate into the situation of the places, people and things that were suspected to have connection with the crime. Had more efforts been exerted in this regard, there would have been more positive results. At least there could have been no shortcomings in the accusation. An accusation of killing 14 unidentified girls was brought against Adam which was very strange in a country of authorities and institutions,” Al-Khateeb said.
“However,” he said, “Many facts have been gained. The prosecution’s statements show that the number of victims has decreased to two, Zainab and Hosn. This means that the story of the other 14 victims was fabricated,” he added.
He said that the entire case centered on those two victims. “I was sure from the very beginning that Adam’s confessions had their motivations and that they were a reaction to the repeated complaints against him which led in the long run to his being sacked from the University. Under pressures he confessed to killing Zainab and others. This is one possibility. Another possibility is that he wanted to tarnish the image of Yemen and its society. The Yemeni society is conservative and families can not let either a son or a daughter disappear without trying to find him or her. The Yemeni society is more careful about women than men. Disappearance of women does not necessarily mean their involvement in a moral scandal,” Al-Khateeb said.
Al-Khateeb appreciated the media represented by newspapers which helped reveal many facts by drawing many exclamation marks about the whole case.
As far as the German experts’ report, Al-Khateeb strongly criticized it saying that it gave a bad impression about the experts’ work indicating the age of the victims which was expected by the report to be between 20-30. “This is inaccurate,” he said. “I think that a nomad can determine a close age of a body by his own way,” he added.
He complained against the magistrate’s way of treatment. “The magistrate should know that by such treatment he is wronging himself. I will not keep silent if that goes on. The law gives me the right to respond against any wrong behaviors. However, I still have hope that the magistrate will improve the way of judging,” he said.
He added that he was not concentrating on the innocence of Adam as mush as his concentration on revealing the truth.
On the subject of meeting his client, “The prosecution is still a stumbling block preventing me from meeting with him,” he said. “The general prosecutor refused to allow me to meet with Adam unless I take with me one of the court officials. In this case Adam will not say something new.
If Adam’s rights are not completely guaranteed as stated by law, I am sure that the international organizations will intervene to guarantee his rights. I might withdraw from the case, not because I felt defeated but because I can not go on in a job where I am not allowed to use my rights,” he added.
When asked whether Adam has been subject to pressure to make confessions out of his will, Al-Khateeb said that keeping the accused at the hold of the general prosecution will not help reveal new facts. It is worth mentioning that Al-Khateeb once demanded moving the defendant to another place.
On the reason why the prosecution do not allow him to meet with his client he said that there were fears of revealing new facts that might change the trend of the whole case. The prosecution then will feel that it tarnished the image of Yemen by accusing him of killing 16 girls which seems impossible to be committed by Adam alone.
Many people are wondering about those suspected to be Adam’s accomplices. These have not been brought to trial. Al-Khateeb attributed this to some shortcomings in the prosecution which he described as against the law.
He said that the present magistrate is not specialized to look into such a case and that it was the responsibility of the judge of the criminal cases at the Bani Hareth court. He added that it was the advocates’ respect for the present magistrate that made them accept him to look into the case despite the fact that it was against the law. However, he promised that he would not keep silent against any act that went against the law.
At the end of his interview he stressed again that meeting with Adam would reveal new facts. He added that, Adam whispered to his ears many times that what had been said in the investigations was false.
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