commentary by Patrick H. Moore
There may come a time in the life of any married person when the husband, wife, or same-sex partner considers garroting the other party. Generally, this is a short-lived fantasy and the aggrieved partner either divorces the unacceptable “other” or simply adjusts his or her expectations and carries on.
But as we all know, there are cases in which the aggrieved partner simply cannot banish the homicidal thoughts and ultimately throws caution to the wind and…
The amazing thing about these cases is the fact that more often than not, the “killer spouse” whacks the partner with no real thought of how to dispose of the body or otherwise construct a reasonable alibi.
Thus, the killer’s “victory” is short-lived because he or she is typically arrested within days or hours of eliminating his or her nemesis spouse.
This would appear to be what happened in the case of a 47-year-old Tunisian husband and father who received a lifetime prison sentence on Thursday for torturing his wife before slitting her throat in a Fribourg, Switzerland apartment because, among other things, she “did not know how to cook couscous”.
The killing occurred four years ago in April. By this point the couple had been separated for some time. The husband, a former accountant with the Tunisian Embassy in Bern, had arrived with his wife in Switzerland from Tunisia in 1999. At some point, their relationship soured and the husband lost his job. Unemployed, he resorted to heavy drinking.
One of the routine consequences of separation is the fact that either estranged partner may well become involved in a little extra-curricular bedroom activity. It’s just one of those things that – your wishes notwithstanding – you are powerless to change. In this case, the husband became convinced that his estranged spouse was sleeping with another man. Whether he had any proof is unclear, but he became extremely jealous of his wife and – in rationalizing his decision to kill her – convinced himself of three things, any one of which may or may not be true. The husband’s accusations were (1) infidelity; (2) the wife not looking after their two daughters, who were 9 and 12 at the time of the murder, properly; and (3) she was incapable of cooking couscous.
Clearly, the third alleged sin must have figured most prominently in the husband’s mind. After all, what good is a significant other who cannot cook couscous?
Although the sentencing judge stated that the husband acted with “methodical sangfroid” in the preparations he made to kill his wife, by the moment of truth, his deliberate step-by-step approach had transformed itself into a towering rage which, according to media reports, led him to attack his wife so savagely that she could only be identified through dental records.
According to the 20 Minutes newspaper, it was revealed in Court that after tying his wife to a bed, the man gagged her and stabbed her in the back 15 times before shooting her in the face with an air gun. He then strangled the woman, who was seven years his junior, before cutting her throat with a knife. (Somewhere along the line, he also apparently raped her).
While stating that there were no extenuating circumstances, the judge managed to hold, at least to some degree, to his theory of “methodical sangfroid”, stating that the convicted murderer had displayed “barbarism, cruelty and determination” in his actions.
The man’s actions following the brutal slaying probably didn’t help his cause much in the eyes of the judge or anyone else. According to court testimony, he washed up and changed, and later shared a meal with his daughters, at which time he told his two children that “their mother was out.”
Then in a eerie and unsettling gesture, that night the man laid next to the body of his blood-drenched ex before turning himself into Fribourg cantonal police the next day.
The man’s two daughters, who are now 13 and 16, have been turned into orphans in a country where they have no other family.
The father was ordered by the court to pay each of the girls 80,000 francs in damages.
The fact that the father has received a life sentence, means that under Swiss law, he will be able to request conditional release after serving 15 years.
He has already spent four years in detention.
The man’s lawyer, had argued earlier that while his client’s acts were “monstrous” the man should not be considered a monster. The lawyer also stated that he likely would be appealing the sentence.
Just to add a little melodrama, the case has attracted Swiss media attention, not just because of its lurid details, but because the accused believed he was being followed by secret police of then Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidene Ben Ali.
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So let’s just suppose that the husband becomes a model prisoner and does get out on conditional release 11 years from now. Not a bad day’s work in a sense. Not only did he get to enjoy what we must assume was for him the immense satisfaction of murdering in ex in most brutal fashion, but if things go well for him, he’ll be released from prison two years prior to turning 60.