Victim: Reema Ramzan was killed by her boyfriend Aras Hussein in June last year, a court heard
A man decapitated his teenage girlfriend while she was still alive then stabbed himself in the chest, a court heard today.
Aras
Hussein, 21, had allegedly blackmailed 18-year-old Reema Ramzan by
taking sexual photographs of her and threatening to share them with her
family if she broke up with him.
Sheffield
Crown Court was told that on June 4 last year, he killed her by cutting
off her head with a knife before inflicting stab wounds on himself.
Prosecutor Graham Reeds QC outlined the case against Iraqi-born Hussein, who denies murder and actual bodily harm.
'Bruising into tissue wounds suggest that Reema was still alive as the defendant started to remove her head,' the lawyer said.
'The
process of decapitation would require considerable motion with
corresponding considerable force which needed to be sustained until all
the tissues had been cut through.
'Force
would also be needed to restrain the victim who is likely to have been
struggling. Severe force would have been needed to cut through the
spinal vertebrae with a knife in order to remove the head.'
Mr
Reeds told the jury that Hussein was seen naked outside his flat in
Sheffield with blood pouring out of his chest, and told emergency
workers: 'I don't know why I did it.
'She like me but I raped her. What I did was wrong. I need punishing for it.'
He also allegedly asked the paramedics: 'Why are you helping me? I've murdered someone.'
The
lawyer said Hussein was likely to claim he was suffering from
diminished responsibility due to schizophrenia at the time of the
attack.
Mr Reeds
said that Miss Ramzan's family disapproved of her relationship with
Hussein, who repeatedly came into conflict with her relatives.
On
one occasion, the QC said, the defendant was warned by police for
taking sexually explicit pictures of his girlfriend and threatening to
show them to her family if she ever left him.
In
another incident, Miss Ramzan's brother Sohail argued with the
defendant after seeing red marks on her neck, but Hussein told him 'he'd
do what he liked'.
Mr Reeds
said it was known that on the day she died, Miss Ramzan went to
Hussein's flat with her passport and a large amount of money.
'She
did not tell anyone from her family she was going there,' he said. 'She
did not tell anyone why she had her passport and this money with her.'
A neighbour of Hussein's later heard a woman 'screaming for dear life', the prosecutor said.
The
defendant stabbed himself in the chest with a large kitchen knife,
removed his blood-stained clothes and went outside, the court heard.
One neighbour who saw him in the car park holding his passport and a wad of money thought he had been shot.
Hussein
was calm when he was first arrested, but after he was taken to the
nearby Northern General Hospital for treatment he attacked staff trying
to help him, Mr Reeds said.
He
allegedly assaulted a cardiothoracic surgeon and an anaesthetist as
well as police officers who tried to restrain him, biting one of them,
before he was injected with a sedative.
Mr Reeds said the prosecution rejected Hussein's likely defence of diminished responsibility.
He
said he had 'no history of mental illness', adding: 'He was able to
function perfectly well - he held down a job, he lived on his own, he
had his own flat and, it's a self-evident truth, he had a girlfriend.'
The
lawyer continued: 'The prosecution case is that his behaviour right up
until the time of the killing was entirely ordinary. Of course the
killing itself was anything but ordinary.
'The
prosecution say that his behaviour at the time of the killing is much
more likely to be explained by the fact he had a propensity towards
violence and his controlling behaviour towards Reema.'
The trial continues.
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