Killed mum when mentally ill
A WOMAN who stabbed her mother to death in their South Granville home nearly two years ago, has been found not guilty of murder on the grounds of mental illness.
NSW Supreme Court Justice Michael Walton found that just after 6am on January 25, 2018, without any warning Siham Khatib, 35, stabbed her mother, 63-year-old Noura Khatib, as she slept on a downstairs couch.
The court was told that after her older sister Faten pulled Siham away from their mother, the younger woman ran into the street screaming for God to “come down” and stopping cars for nearly 10 minutes.
In a police interview after her mother’s death, she referred to both her mother and sister as devils.
In his evidence, forensic psychiatrist Dr David Greenberg said Ms Khatib was “acutely psychotic” during the police interview and suffering from delusions with her mood ranging from smiling and happy to “mercurially angry”.‚Ä®The court heard that Ms Khatib had been a patient at the Cumberland public psychiatric hospital five times between 2011 and 2017, and had a history of being “non-compliant with her medication”.
Psychiatrist Dr Richard Furst also assessed Ms Khatib and said at the time of the murder, she demonstrated “grossly disturbed and disinhibited behaviour, paranoid delusions, grandiose delusions and religious delusions”. ‚Ä®”[The stabbing was] the direct result of her severe mania with psychotic features, Ms Khatib perceiving her mother to be the devil, believing her own life to be under threat, and feeling her actions were the right thing to do,” he said.
Ms Khatib’s condition was stabilised after about six weeks of treatment while in custody, however the judge ruled she can’t be released until a determination by the Mental Health Review Tribunal.
