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The Possessed Sheikh: Unpacking the Unthinkable Murder That Baffled Egyptian Courts · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: June fourteenth, twenty twenty two Al Mansala Sender Mansurah, Egypt.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Picture a hot, ordinary summer night. Then suddenly quiet shatters.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you hear that unmistakable sound of a police siren
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: slicing through the night air, getting closer, and with it
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: the noise of people gathering, a crowd forming quickly outside
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: this one particular unassuming home.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Police are responding to an emergency call, a really disturbing one.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: It came from a young man just nineteen. Omer. He
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: was sobbing on the phone, you know, barely coherent.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Begging them to hurry. He said his mother had been
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: killed and he needed help restraining the killer.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: So when investigators get inside, the first thing that hits
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: them is the well, the strangeness of the location itself.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: It's not a typical house. The crime scene is the
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: small room kind of tacked onto a garage. It's cluttered,
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: full of car accessory parts, but clearly being used as
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: like a living space too.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: And inside just immediate chaos. Omer the caller, he's on
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: the ground, semi conscious, eating badly from a head wound.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: He'd clearly put up a fight, struck with something sharp
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: while trying to you know stop what was happening.
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  Speaker 1: Then the officers see the victim, hadj Nargie's outside omer
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  Speaker 1: his mother.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: She's on the floor, brutally uh slaughtered. The room's just
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: covered in blood, an absolutely horrific scene.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: But then their attention snaps to someone else, a man nearby.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Neighbors are holding him down.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: He's sitting there, but he seems utterly vacant, like trapped
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: in this profound state of shock maybe confusion. It's described
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: almost like catatonia.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: And here's a moment, the detail that defines this whole case.
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  Speaker 2: Really, he's looking up past the ceiling talking, clearly talking
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: to someone or something. Nobody else can see.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: What did he say?
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: He says, I finished everything required of me. Then his
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: tone shifts becomes this desperate plea begging this unseen entity
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: to spare his son and his brother, O Mayor.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: That man the perpetrator was Mahmoud.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Mowaffie Hadjen Nargie's own son, a.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Man the community knew intimately not as a killer, but
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: as well a figure of deep faith.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: They called him shake Moawafi, and.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Almost overnight that title morphed into something else across the region,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: something chilling that captured the sheer impossibility of it all,
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  Speaker 1: the possessed shake.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: And that's the core of it, Isn't it a central
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: mystery we're digging into today?
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  Speaker 1: Exactly how does a man like that, respected devout commit
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: the ultimate act of violence against the person he seemed
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: to love most.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: We really need to unpack this. Look at the evidence
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: where frankly, the motives just defy logic, and where public
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: sympathy remarkably flowed towards both the victim and the killer.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, so to understand the fall, we have to grasp
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: the heights he fell from. Let's talk about Mahmoud Mohawafi
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: before all this happened, right.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: He was thirty nine and by every measure successful, owned
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: his own business, specialized car parts, known for being honest, hardworking.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: The sources really paint this picture of a deeply trustworthy,
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: established guy in the community.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: And the title shake that wasn't just honorary, was it
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: not at all?
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  Speaker 2: He was genuinely devout, had memorized the entire Qur'an, often
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: led the Fudger prayers, the dawn prayers at the local mosque.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: He was, like you said earlier, a pillar.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: Okay, what about his personal life seemed just as solid.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: Deeply loved his wife and son, and especially his mother,
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: hodgen Argie's. We know he insisted she lived with them,
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: not out of obligation, it seems, but because he genuinely
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: wanted to care for her himself. Their bond was reportedly
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: very strong, very affectionate.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: So a solid foundation by all accounts. Yeah, where did
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: the cracks start to show?
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  Speaker 2: It seems to begin with this growing, almost obsessive fear.
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  Speaker 2: Despite his strong faith, he became deeply paranoid about Sir
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: Sorcery and Hassad the evil eye envy. He felt constantly
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: under threat, always trying these protective measures.
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  Speaker 1: And this wasn't just a mental fearite, it started manifesting
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  Speaker 1: physically exactly.
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  Speaker 2: That's the next crucial step. He started seeing things, hearing
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: voices or sounds that weren't there. He'd mention it, you know,
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: did you see that or did you hear that? They
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: would say no, they saw nothing.
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  Speaker 1: That must have been terrifying for him, isolating absolutely.
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  Speaker 2: And then came the physical symptoms, strange convulsions, these unexplained
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  Speaker 2: spasms started happening, And.
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  Speaker 1: There was that very specific description he gave.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, he talked about constantly feeling this immense heavy weight
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  Speaker 2: on his shoulders. His words were as if someone was
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  Speaker 2: sitting on him debilitating.
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  Speaker 1: Wow, so you have this devout man successful suddenly plagued
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: by these fears, these visions, these physical burdens.
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  Speaker 2: Right, And that combination his faith, his fear of spiritual attack,
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  Speaker 2: and these undeniable physical things happening, it created this powerful
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: belief for him and his family that this wasn't just,
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: you know, a standard medical problem.
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  Speaker 1: They believed it was something external, something malicious, taking.
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  Speaker 2: Hold precisely, and that feeling that presence. It didn't stay internal.
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  Speaker 2: The unseen force, as he perceived it, started giving commands.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, this is where it really shifts from inner turmoil
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  Speaker 1: to potential danger.
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  Speaker 2: It does. One day, he describes hearing this clear voice
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: telling him to go up to the roof of his house.
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  Speaker 2: When he got there, the voice was explicit. It commanded him,
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: you must kill your son. Oh my god, he said.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: He fought against it, this overwhelming, terrifying urge, and that
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  Speaker 2: day somehow he managed to suppress it. But the struggle
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: was clearly.
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  Speaker 1: Escalating, and it didn't stay private for long, did it.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: There was that incident at the mosque.
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  Speaker 2: That's right, his first major public breakdown. Right there in
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: the mosque, surrounded by people who respected him, He had
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: a massive convulsion, started speaking out loud, directly addressing these
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: unseen things, begging them publicly to leave him alone.
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  Speaker 1: That must have cemented it for the community completely.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: That was the turning point for everyone watching. There was
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: no doubt he wasn't just sick. He was, in their eyes,
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: the possessed chic.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: So the family's desperate. Now where do they turn?
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: And this is where you see that clash, that tension.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: They tried two very different paths for help.
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  Speaker 1: Medicine.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: First, yes, his wife understandably pushed him to see a psychiatrist.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: They went, He underwent a full examination and the result,
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: this is critical. The doctor concluded Mamod was mentally and
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: physically healthy, no identifiable psychological illness, no clinical diagnosis they
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: could offer, even though.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: Mamood was apparently talking to unseen people during the examination.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: Exactly the doctor acknowledged the behavior but couldn't fit it
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: into a known diagnostic box, which in some ways is
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  Speaker 2: almost worse, isn't it.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it leaves this terrifying void. If medicine says you're fine,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: but you're clearly not.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: What then, So, with no answers from science, they turned
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: to faith. They sought out a shik who specialized in rukia.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: Explained rukia briefly.
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  Speaker 2: It's a practice within Islam, essentially a spiritual healing or exorcism,
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  Speaker 2: using specific churonic verses and supplications to treat ailments believed
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: to be caused by gin, sorcery or the evil eye.
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  Speaker 2: It's a formal, intense process.
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  Speaker 1: And what did this specialists say?
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  Speaker 2: He assessed Mamood and immediately said the case was very
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: late and difficult. He recognized the severity straight away.
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  Speaker 1: What happened during the session.
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  Speaker 2: It was apparently quite violent. Mahmood suffered intense convulsions, thrashing around,
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  Speaker 2: and crucially he started shouting out these strange names names. Yes,
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: and the sheikh performing the rikia the spiritual guy had
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: confirmed them. He said, yes, those are names associated with
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: the jin.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: So for the family that must have felt like confirmation.
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  Speaker 2: Absolutely, you have the psychiatrist saying we don't know, he
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  Speaker 2: seems healthy, and the spiritual experts saying, yes, this is
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  Speaker 2: possession and it's serious. The debate for them was essentially over.
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  Speaker 1: He was convinced, they were convinced he was fighting some
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  Speaker 1: kind of demonic influence.
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  Speaker 2: And that's the tragedy. You have to remember. He believed
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: he was in a fight for his very soul, and
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: the voice, this presence, didn't let up. It continued its
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: its manipulative campaign.
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  Speaker 1: Which brings us to that terrible day June fourteenth.
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  Speaker 2: The voice returned same demand, kill your son, but then
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: it changed instantly, almost like psychological torture. It switched tactics,
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: telling him falsely that it was too late, that his
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: brother Omer had already killed the son.
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  Speaker 1: God the panic he must have felt.
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  Speaker 2: He raced downstairs, frantic, found his son alive, unharmed. Omar
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: was there, saw his brother's state manage to talk him down,
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  Speaker 2: calm him just for a moment, convinced him to try
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  Speaker 2: and rest.
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  Speaker 1: But the calm didn't last.
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  Speaker 2: No, Almost immediately the voice came back with the final
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  Speaker 2: fatal command.
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  Speaker 1: Kill his mother, hudgen Argie's. And what happened next is
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  Speaker 1: it's just profoundly disturbing.
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  Speaker 2: It is because there's this remnant of the man he was.
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  Speaker 2: He finds his mother praying, and he waits, He actually
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: waits patiently for her to finish her prayers.
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  Speaker 1: Then he attacked her.
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  Speaker 2: His first attempt was with a pillow, trying to suffocate her.
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  Speaker 2: It failed.
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  Speaker 1: She fought back, and during the struggle, this.
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  Speaker 2: Is where that unnatural strength emerges again. The family witnessed it.
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  Speaker 2: He pushed his wife and his brother omer aside with ease,
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  Speaker 2: effortlessly dragging his mother fighting him downstairs towards the garage room, and.
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  Speaker 1: The family described his appearance changing.
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  Speaker 2: They did powerful testimony later. They said his eyes, his
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: whole demeanor were completely different, unfamiliar, alien, cold. It wasn't
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  Speaker 2: the mood they knew looking back at them.
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  Speaker 1: And then in that cluttered garage space, he.
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  Speaker 2: Grabbed a tool from the workshop clutter, a cutter, and
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  Speaker 2: he slit his mother's.
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  Speaker 1: Throat, the final unthinkable act.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, and the immediate aftermath is almost as shocking as
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: the act itself. The moment it was done, the aggression
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  Speaker 2: just vanished. He dropped the weapon, sat down on the
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  Speaker 2: floor next to his mother's body, completely disoriented again, seemingly
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  Speaker 2: unable to comprehend what had just happened. That's the state
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  Speaker 2: the police found him in, that catatonic confusion, So.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: The investigation begins and the police are facing well a
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: nightmare scenario.
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  Speaker 2: Absolutely from a legal standpoint, where's the motive. No inheritance disputes,
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  Speaker 2: no money problems, no history of arguments or conflict. Nothing.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: He killed the person he seemed most devoted to protect,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: the woman everyone said he adored.
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  Speaker 2: Because of the bizarre nature of it all, the eyewitness
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: account of his state, he was quickly transferred sent to
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: a mental and neurological hospital for extended observation two months.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: And the conclusion from the hospital after two months of
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: intense study.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: This is the second finding that just fuels the entire controversy.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: The doctors came back with the same conclusion as the
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: first psychiatrist.
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  Speaker 1: No psychological illness, none.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: That they could identify. They deemed him mentally capable, legally
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: responsible for his actions.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: So based on that medical green light, legally speaking, he.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: Was charged with premeditated murder and subsequently sentenced to death.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: But the story doesn't end there. The community reaction was significant,
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: wasn't it huge?
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: Overwhelming public sympathy from a mood. The local community largely
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: didn't accept the verdict. They insisted he wasn't evil, he
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: was afflicted. He lost control, and.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: This public pressure, this belief in his well lack of culpability.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: It led to action.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: It did. A lawyer took on the case pro bono,
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: specifically to appeal the death sentence. The grounds were essentially
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: this loss of conscious control, arguing he wasn't himself when
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: it happened.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: Then came the appeal hearing December twelfth, twenty twenty four.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: My mood spoke yes, and his statement to the judge
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: was reportedly incredibly moving, tearful. It really cemented that public empathy.
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  Speaker 1: What did he say?
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  Speaker 2: Things like if I intended to kill my mother, I
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: would not speak a word. And he described her role
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: in his life. She was my mother, father, sister, daughter,
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: and wife. She was my heaven on this earth. Powerful words.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: How did the defense approach this legally given the medical findings?
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: It was complex. Firstly, a major factor his siblings, including Omer,
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: who he'd injured, formally waived their right to retribution in
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: that legal system that carries immense weight against a death sentence. Okay. Secondly,
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: the defense argued that, look, while the law doesn't officially
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: recognize jen possession or sir as a defense, you have
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: to look at the totality of the evidence, the unnatural
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: strength witnessed by multiple people, the complete change in his
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: eyes and demeanor, the utter lack of any rational motive.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: They argued, it all pointed to some kind of external
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: force or break causing a total loss of control, even
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: if medicine couldn't label.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: It, and the court's decision they listened.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: The judge ultimately commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment. Crucially,
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: the ruling acknowledged this case as one of the most unusual,
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: most baffling crimes in Egyptian judicial history. The decision itself
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: was a recognition that something extraordinary, something perhaps unexplainable by
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: standard legal or medical terms, had occurred.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: So we're left for this profound, unsettling ambiguity.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: Stark ambiguity. You have this successful, respected, deeply religious man
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: who commits the most horrific crime imaginable against his own mother.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Was it, as many believed, a case of profound spiritual possession,
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: something beyond the reach of modern medicine.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: Or was it some incredibly rare, complex form of psychological breakdown,
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: something that manifested with such bizarre physical symptoms that it
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: simply didn't fit into any existing psychiatric category and so
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: it slipped through the diagnostic net.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: If we step back and think about the implications, well, the.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: Court's compromise life imprisonment instead of death, It really highlights
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: the tightrope legal systems walk, doesn't it, When they're confronted
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: with defenses that lean on factors outside, you know, typical
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: material evidence like spiritual affliction or a complete inexplicable break
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: from reality.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: It raises some fundamental questions for us, For you listening,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: what does.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: Free will even mean when you have credible eyewitnesses describing
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: seemingly supernatural strength and a complete personality shift when the
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: person themselves is pleading that they were not in control.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: The court basically acknowledged the extreme unusualness of the situation.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: They said, Okay, this wasn't a standard murder, right.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: So in a case like that, where the legal system
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: itself recognizes something profoundly abnormal happened, where do you draw
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: the line? Where does legal responsibility end and where does
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: the possibility of some other influence spiritual or psychological but
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: utterly overwhelming begin.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: It's a case that forces us to confront the very
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: boundaries of human control belief, and what happens when those
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: boundaries seem to shatter