Nanny beheads toddler she was ordered to murder by Allah: Police
A nanny, who police in Moscow, Russia, said beheaded a child in her care, was arrested by Russian police officers as she proudly held up the child’s severed head outside a city train station on Monday. She later confessed to officers that “Allah had ordered her to commit the jihadist act,” according to American law enforcement liaison officer Edward Benjamin Smereczniak.
Russian Police officers reportedly had to use force to restrain her and take her down to the ground in order to recover the four-year-old’s severed head and to handcuff the shouting woman, according to Smereczniak, who has worked for several law enforcement agencies in the United States and is now a police training contractor.
The suspect, 38-year-old Gulchekhra Bobokulova, is divorced from her husband and won custody of their three children from the Islamic former Soviet state of Uzbekistan. She shocked passersby while she wandered the streets of Moscow dressed in a burka while holding the child’s severed head in the air and shouting Islamic words.
The child was identified as a 4-year-old female toddler named Anastasia (Nastya) Meshcheryakova,
Eyewitnesses claim the beheading was carried out as part of the global jihad, but once she was in detention Russian government officials suspect she may be suffering from mental illness and reacting to what she’s seen in the media.
Russian national police detectives discovered that the suspected killer has been working as the nanny for a Russian family and that she murdered and cut-off the head of one of the children in her care. Besides the murder, she is also being charged with arson for torching the family’s home before fleeing.
Most of Russia’s state-controlled television channels didn’t report the incident, which led to outrage from many citizens and officials, but which the government had encouraged. The TV channels’ officials and government authorities claim that it would have been unconscionable if the gory photographs and descriptions were to be broadcast without restraint.
Ms. Bobokulova yelled out when being escorted into the courtroom on Wednesday that Allah demanded she do what she did to the child, but that she repented and agrees she should be locked up.
While she sat in a secured steel cage which is customary for defendants in the Russian criminal court system, Bobokulova waved to officials, reporters and visitors and said: “I am Allah’s messenger. Hello everyone.”
Government officials have routinely issued public alerts about the dangers to civilians posed by members of Islamic terrorist groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to Russians. Russian police believe that Russia’s military intervention in Syria on behalf of President Bashar al-Assad, a dictator accused of using chemical weapons on his own people, has led to retaliation by ISIS affiliates or wannabes.
Police detectives are investigating whether the killer nanny is linked to a terrorist group or is a lone-wolf. The court ordered law enforcement to detain her for two months while the investigation continued after hearing that she presented an “exceptional risk to public safety”.
