Should Afghan who killed two women be tried for murder, or declared mentally unfit?
Two legal experts from the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences (INMLCF) have differed in court today on the imputability of the Afghan man on trial for killing two women at the Ismaili Centre in Lisbon in 2023.
In the indictment, the Public Prosecutor’s Office requested that the defendant be declared imputable because, at the time of the acts, he suffered from a “psychic anomaly”, namely schizophrenia associated with narcissistic and antisocial personality disorders.
At the first session of the trial, on December 5, 2024, the defendant claimed that he acted in self-defence and that there was a plot to kill him, which is not supported by any evidence.
During today’s session, the psychiatrist defending Abdul Bashir’s unimpeachability insisted that everything happened in a delusional state associated with schizophrenia.
“The victims would have been part of the delusional system, and therefore, the crime would have been related to that system,” reiterated João Oliveira, who told the court that “it was natural” that, feeling persecuted, the Bashir carried the knife with which he killed 24-year-old Mariana Jagaudy and 49-year-old Farana Sadrudin, both Portuguese citizens.
“He might have realised that he was attacking people, but at that moment, he wouldn’t have understood that this was an illegal act,” the psychiatrist said, adding that the likelihood of Bashir having simulated his symptoms was “very low”.
However, forensic psychologist Vasco Curado does not hold with the diagnosis of schizophrenia.
“If he was in full delirium, he could even be careless. A delusional schizophrenic is not calculating. Schizophrenic violence is disorganised,” this expert stressed today.
For Curado, Abdul Bashir acted in a context of “accumulated anger towards the victims”, then learnt to simulate the symptoms of schizophrenia and went on his killing rampage. In other words, he should be held accountable.
“If he is judged to be incompetent”, Bashir “will be even more dangerous” because he will feel “that he hasn’t been punished”, the expert added.
In the indictment, the Public Prosecutor’s Office has requested that Bashir be sentenced to internment rather than prison, given his clinical state.
João Oliveira also believes that internment is the answer. It will reduce his dangerousness, apparently.
Bashir, 30, and initially a beneficiary of international refugee protection status, has been on remand since March 2023 in a prison hospital in Greater Lisbon.
He is charged with two counts of aggravated murder, six counts of attempted aggravated murder, two counts of resisting and coercing an official and one count of possession of a prohibited weapon.
The dead worked in the Ismaili Centre’s refugee support service.
The next trial session is on March 14, when the court will hear the psychiatrist currently accompanying Bashir, as well as final arguments.
Lusa’s report today does not allude to Abdul Bashir’s past in which it is suggested he may have been responsible for the death of his own wife – the mother of his three children – in a refugee camp in Greece in 2019.
