Moroccan Mother Sentenced to 18 Years for Daughter’s Murder in Exorcism Case

Ikram Benhadi, 27, found herself in prison as the alleged perpetrator of the murder of her daughters. Ikram was convinced that their house was haunted and did not want an evil spirit to enter the children’s bodies. The first, Sara, died in 2011, but her body was discovered in 2014, after the death at the hospital of little Marwa on November 21 of the same year. The third daughter, Riham, was spared and placed under the guardianship of the social services of the government of Aragon. According to medical reports, the girls, under three months old, showed signs of hypotonia, generalized discoloration, vomiting and slight bleeding from the mouth.

The family planned to go to Morocco to perform a kind of exorcism. Marwa’s autopsy revealed that she died of an asphyxial shock due to mechanical suffocation. The first baby, Sara, would have died under the same conditions, according to the specialists of the Institute of Forensic Medicine and Forensic Sciences of Aragon (IMLCFA), even if no autopsy could be performed on her body. "I love my daughters, I endured nine months with fainting, vomiting and bleeding, so I can’t do that," the young woman defended herself during her trial before the Saragossa court in 2016.

The young woman claimed that the minors suffered from these problems from birth and that they became pale with purple lips and vomited at the hospital. Ikram Benhadi’s version was corroborated by all her relatives who described several episodes of suffocation of the children in the absence of the mother. "Marwa was hungry, we fed her and changed her diaper. Ikram went to make coffee when she suddenly started turning blue and died in our arms at the health center," said her mother-in-law. Health workers even witnessed some of these respiratory crises of the children in the hospital.

The prosecution requested 55 years in prison for the deaths of the two babies and the attempted murder of the last one. But the provincial court finally sentenced Ikram to 18 years in prison for the murder of Marwa. A sentence confirmed by the Supreme Court, noting that the psychological, anthropological or psychiatric reports "showed the absolute inability to shed light on these deaths, surrounded by mysteries, not to mention the motives of the accused to commit these crimes which remain "unknown".