13 November 2023 , 16:09
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A killer cut his teenage girlfriend's throat and repeatedly stabbed her to death in her university halls.
Tunisian Maher Maaroufe knifed City University psychology undergraduate Sabita Thanwani, 19, in Clerkenwell, central London, on March 19 last year. Police were called after a neighbour heard the victim telling Maaroufe to stop, before telling him: "I can't breathe. You're going to kill me."
Officers found her lying on the floor with a large wound to her neck. She had suffered 18 cuts to her face, neck and chest area. The fatal wound had slashed her jugular vein. Maaroufe, 23, then donned a balaclava and fled before police officers arrived at the building.
He was found by police sleeping under tarpaulin in a garden shed the next day and head-butted a detective constable. Cannabis smoker Maaroufe, suffers from paranoia and hallucinations and has been diagnosed with a schizo-affective disorder.
Dr Christian Brown, a consultant psychiatrist who has been treating Maaroufe at Broadmoor maximum security hospital, told the killer's latest hearing at the Old Bailey: "By his accounts, he believed that Sabita turned in front of his eyes into a devil, a male one at that, he describes killing a male figure. He sensed that he had done something wrong, which by his accounts appears to have come to him in the minutes or hours after the offence.
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Sabita's killer is being treated at Broadmoor (PA)"Despite having been charged with her murder, I do not know if he knew what he had done at the time. The level of violence here is very extreme and his behaviour afterwards, wearing women's clothes, going away, hiding, headbutting a police officer, the basis of it is the psychotic illness."
Maaroufe had entered the UK legally years ago but he was served with a deportation notice as an overstayer on 14 August 2019. He has since applied for asylum but the matter remains unresolved.
He appeared in court flanked by four dock officers, wearing a white shirt and blue tie. He earlier admitted manslaughter and assault of an emergency worker by beating Detective Constable James Preston. He denied murder on the basis on diminished responsibility due to his schizo-affective disorder. Maaroufe will return for sentence at the Old Bailey on Friday, December 8.