SANAA, 23 February 2003 — Fann Saeed Ghanem, a 26-year-old Yemeni, has made history by killing her husband in cold blood.
Fann was forced into three nightmarish marriages, and moved from place to place to escape from ill-treatment at the hands of all three husbands. After divorcing from the first, she was forced into a turbulent second marriage. She divorced him as well after three years, and her third marriage was to last just three months.
In prison pending trial, Fann spoke to Al-Jadeeda, a sister publication of Arab News.
“My second husband and third husband were work colleagues,” she says. “When my second husband came to pick up my third husband, he would insult me in front of him. There was no one to defend me or show compassion,” she recalled.
“Even my colleagues at the hospital where I worked would make fun of me, calling me ‘Afann’ (rotten), not Fann.”
“When my third husband made it clear that he would divorce me and marry someone else, and that he had married me without taking account of my feelings, I decided to kill him.”
One day he complained of a headache.
“I told him I was going to give him something for his pain and injected him with a sedative. When he was unconscious, I tied his hands and feet with a rope and then I cut his head off. I was thinking of cutting his whole body into pieces, but I didn’t want so much blood on the floor. I went to the police and turned myself in, but they didn’t believe me until they came and saw the decapitated body.”
She says that she did not have an accomplice in the crime, and did not intend to return to her second husband.
“They were birds of a feather,” she explained. “They beat me a lot, and for all I care they can both go to hell.”
Asked if, as has been alleged, she tried to kill her second husband as well, she says: “I’m not as evil as people think.”
Many people are also saying she is insane.
“I do not know if I am crazy or not,” she asserts. “When I killed my husband, I thought I was dreaming. I don’t know what drove me to do what I did.”
However, “when I remember how I was living in hell, I don’t regret a thing.”
She adds she is a lot happier in prison.
“My fellow inmates never make fun of me, and they understand my situation,” she says.
It is possible that she will be condemned to death.
“Then I will blame the judge, society and police for not understanding the misery I lived in,” she claims. “I will ask them to take care of my children and I will tell society that no one kills without a reason.”
A lawyer, who volunteered to defend her, is planning to enter a plea of insanity on Fann’s behalf. “Everybody knows she is ill,” he told Al-Jadeeda. “I am going to tell the court that she was in hospital for four months.”
“Several witnesses will testify that she once burned her clothes because she didn’t receive her salary,” he adds. “This is clearly evidence that she is not all there.”
