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In Yemen, a Sudanese morgue worker at Sanaa University used his position at the university at least 16 women. Mohammad Adam Omar, 48, was arrested May 17, 2000, following the persistent complaining by the mother of an Iraqi student who mysteriously disappeared December 1999. After his arrest, the lethal morgue worker confessed to killing 51 women in Lebanon, Kuwait, Nigeria, Yemen, Jordan, and Sudan over a 25-year period. In Yemen, Omar confessed to killing 16 women, eight of whom were students at the university. He said he would them to the university's morgue where he would hit them hard on the head until they died. Then he would skin them, He also said he cut off the hands and feet of his victims, dissolved them in chemicals and kept their bones as mementos.
Yemeni police reported they discovered the remains of 15 women around the medical faculty of Sanaa University. Nine of the corpses were skeletons, six headless corpses. Two additional heads were found that did not match any of the bodies. Some of the remains were found buried and others were in the university's sewage system. In custody, Omar said he regretted his murder spree but said he had been unable to resist the urge to kill beautiful women. "I regret what I did and executing me will purify me from my sins," he said in an interview. "Sometimes I used to hate what I did, but when I saw women, especially beautiful ones, something happened inside me that I could not resist at all." As a child he allegedly enjoyed killing and skinning rabbits. By the time he was 22 he graduated to killing women.
In court, Omar was all smiles as he recanted his previous confession of committing 16 and claimed to have only killed two women, the Iraqi student whose mother's insistence led to his arrest, and a Yemeni student. Omar allegedly charged the Iraqi student a fee of US$ 2500 in exchange for high grades in anatomy. When she failed to comply, Omar lured her into a small room in the morgue and killed her. Her mother, Karimah Mutlak, said she would like to kill Omar with her own hands and dismember him the way he dismembered her daughter: "My only dream now is to see the body of Mohammad Adam chopped into pieces as he did to all these girls," she said in an interview with the English-language Gulf News. "I would do it myself, with my own hands, in a public place in the middle of Sanaa if they would let me."
Police added that Omar may have been involved in the smuggling of body parts abroad for scientific purposes and they are looking for least three accomplices in the trade of bodyparts to other Arab countries for medical experiments. When he was arrested police said that Adam "tried to commit suicide by slicing open his wrists with glass from his spectacles." Yemen's parliament decided to form a commission to investigate the killings, a parliamentary source said, and the cabinet also discussed the murders, "insisting on the need to conclude quickly the police enquiry to explain the circumstances of the crimes."
Students at Sanaa University, outraged over revelations of Mohammad Adam Omar's bloodlust, said they will sue university officials for neglect over the murderous rampage of the university morgue worker. "The student union has decided to file a criminal suit against university administrators and security guards... for failing to carry out their duties," a statement said. Since the revelations of Omar's unchecked criminality, student protesters have taken to the streets demanding the firing of senior university officials and university security officers. The student union said it would call off the protests while their case is in court, but warned: "if we detect any attempt to undermine the case or be lenient with any of those involved we will strengthen our protests and broaden them to include all the universities in Yemen." The students marched to the office of President Ali Abdullah Saleh where they presented a list of demands including that the trial of the Omar be televised and "that he be executed and crucified outside the university's faculty of medicine."
On November 20 Omar was convicted of killing two women and sentenced to death. The court ordered that the former morgue worker be executed by firing squad in the main square of the medical school. The court also ordered Omar to pay each of the victims' families 5 million riyals ($41,600) and ordered that two lecture halls in the school be named after the two victims - Noor Aziz and Hoson al-Hamdani.
On August 22, 2001, Omar was executed in a lot outside the city in front of a crowd of 30,000 people. The Sudanese morgue attendant confessed to 16 murders but was convicted of only two. Many believe that Omar may have been the scapegoat in a wider sex-and-murder scandal, possibly involving dozens of murders and powerful figures. The most widespread theory among those who doubted the prosecution's case against Omar was that the medical school morgue may have been used to dispose of the bodies of young women who died in exclusive brothels in Sana. On the other hand, prosecutors and senior officials at the medical school vigorously denied there was any conspiracy in the trial or its outcome. "The general belief among the public is there are partners and motivations for committing these crimes, and those partners may amazingly be among the highest classes of the society," declared The Yemen Times, an English-language newspaper published in the Yemeni capital.
According to Yemenis who witnessed the execution, Omar was forced to kneel, then pushed face down onto the bare ground. He was lashed 80 times across his back with a whip of knotted leather. The additional punishment was ordered after Omar admitted at his trial to having drunk alcohol, a serious offense under the Islamic legal code enforced in Yemeni courts. After the lashes, a police officer braced himself with his legs either side of the condemned man, and fired three rounds from a Kalashnikov assault rifle aimed vertically at his upper back. As Omar continued to move, the officer fired at his head. His body was then taken to a secret burial place.
Originally, the prosecution presented a confession by Omar saying he had killed 51 women during throughout a 20-year period around the Arab world. As inconsistencies came to light, the state shifted their charges to saying there had been only 16 victims, all in Yemen, whose remains were found in the morgue sewers. Finally, that version, too, was scratched, and Omar was charged at the trial with the murder of only two women.
In Yemen, a Sudanese morgue worker at Sanaa University used his position at the university at least 16 women. Mohammad Adam Omar, 48, was arrested May 17, 2000, following the persistent complaining by the mother of an Iraqi student who mysteriously disappeared December 1999. After his arrest, the lethal morgue worker confessed to killing 51 women in Lebanon, Kuwait, Nigeria, Yemen, Jordan, and Sudan over a 25-year period. In Yemen, Omar confessed to killing 16 women, eight of whom were students at the university. He said he would them to the university's morgue where he would hit them hard on the head until they died. Then he would skin them, He also said he cut off the hands and feet of his victims, dissolved them in chemicals and kept their bones as mementos.
Yemeni police reported they discovered the remains of 15 women around the medical faculty of Sanaa University. Nine of the corpses were skeletons, six headless corpses. Two additional heads were found that did not match any of the bodies. Some of the remains were found buried and others were in the university's sewage system. In custody, Omar said he regretted his murder spree but said he had been unable to resist the urge to kill beautiful women. "I regret what I did and executing me will purify me from my sins," he said in an interview. "Sometimes I used to hate what I did, but when I saw women, especially beautiful ones, something happened inside me that I could not resist at all." As a child he allegedly enjoyed killing and skinning rabbits. By the time he was 22 he graduated to killing women.
In court, Omar was all smiles as he recanted his previous confession of committing 16 and claimed to have only killed two women, the Iraqi student whose mother's insistence led to his arrest, and a Yemeni student. Omar allegedly charged the Iraqi student a fee of US$ 2500 in exchange for high grades in anatomy. When she failed to comply, Omar lured her into a small room in the morgue and killed her. Her mother, Karimah Mutlak, said she would like to kill Omar with her own hands and dismember him the way he dismembered her daughter: "My only dream now is to see the body of Mohammad Adam chopped into pieces as he did to all these girls," she said in an interview with the English-language Gulf News. "I would do it myself, with my own hands, in a public place in the middle of Sanaa if they would let me."
Police added that Omar may have been involved in the smuggling of body parts abroad for scientific purposes and they are looking for least three accomplices in the trade of bodyparts to other Arab countries for medical experiments. When he was arrested police said that Adam "tried to commit suicide by slicing open his wrists with glass from his spectacles." Yemen's parliament decided to form a commission to investigate the killings, a parliamentary source said, and the cabinet also discussed the murders, "insisting on the need to conclude quickly the police enquiry to explain the circumstances of the crimes."
Students at Sanaa University, outraged over revelations of Mohammad Adam Omar's bloodlust, said they will sue university officials for neglect over the murderous rampage of the university morgue worker. "The student union has decided to file a criminal suit against university administrators and security guards... for failing to carry out their duties," a statement said. Since the revelations of Omar's unchecked criminality, student protesters have taken to the streets demanding the firing of senior university officials and university security officers. The student union said it would call off the protests while their case is in court, but warned: "if we detect any attempt to undermine the case or be lenient with any of those involved we will strengthen our protests and broaden them to include all the universities in Yemen." The students marched to the office of President Ali Abdullah Saleh where they presented a list of demands including that the trial of the Omar be televised and "that he be executed and crucified outside the university's faculty of medicine."
On November 20 Omar was convicted of killing two women and sentenced to death. The court ordered that the former morgue worker be executed by firing squad in the main square of the medical school. The court also ordered Omar to pay each of the victims' families 5 million riyals ($41,600) and ordered that two lecture halls in the school be named after the two victims - Noor Aziz and Hoson al-Hamdani.
On August 22, 2001, Omar was executed in a lot outside the city in front of a crowd of 30,000 people. The Sudanese morgue attendant confessed to 16 murders but was convicted of only two. Many believe that Omar may have been the scapegoat in a wider sex-and-murder scandal, possibly involving dozens of murders and powerful figures. The most widespread theory among those who doubted the prosecution's case against Omar was that the medical school morgue may have been used to dispose of the bodies of young women who died in exclusive brothels in Sana. On the other hand, prosecutors and senior officials at the medical school vigorously denied there was any conspiracy in the trial or its outcome. "The general belief among the public is there are partners and motivations for committing these crimes, and those partners may amazingly be among the highest classes of the society," declared The Yemen Times, an English-language newspaper published in the Yemeni capital.
According to Yemenis who witnessed the execution, Omar was forced to kneel, then pushed face down onto the bare ground. He was lashed 80 times across his back with a whip of knotted leather. The additional punishment was ordered after Omar admitted at his trial to having drunk alcohol, a serious offense under the Islamic legal code enforced in Yemeni courts. After the lashes, a police officer braced himself with his legs either side of the condemned man, and fired three rounds from a Kalashnikov assault rifle aimed vertically at his upper back. As Omar continued to move, the officer fired at his head. His body was then taken to a secret burial place.
Originally, the prosecution presented a confession by Omar saying he had killed 51 women during throughout a 20-year period around the Arab world. As inconsistencies came to light, the state shifted their charges to saying there had been only 16 victims, all in Yemen, whose remains were found in the morgue sewers. Finally, that version, too, was scratched, and Omar was charged at the trial with the murder of only two women.
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