Latest / Crime Night / The Minya Massacre: Neighbor’s Desperation and Deadly Gossip Shatter a Peaceful Egyptian Village

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The Minya Massacre: Neighbor’s Desperation and Deadly Gossip Shatter a Peaceful Egyptian Village · Crime Night

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to the deep dive. Today, we're looking into a
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  Speaker 1: crime that really shakes that idea of safety in close communities.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: We're going into the story from Abu Alabas in Minya, Egypt.
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  Speaker 1: It's a case where the everyday routine masked something truly
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  Speaker 1: terrifying and trust between neighbors well and turned deadly. To
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  Speaker 1: really get the weight of this, you need to understand
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  Speaker 1: Abu Alabas itself. It's a small farming village life. There
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  Speaker 1: is well predictable quiet, everyone's connected and the rhythm is
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: set by the seasons, by agriculture. Radia, her three young
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  Speaker 1: sons and her husband Mubarak working away in Libya. They
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  Speaker 1: were kind of the definition of.
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  Speaker 2: This stable life and that stability is key here. Radia,
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  Speaker 2: she was thirty five, ran the household like clockwork. Her
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  Speaker 2: boys just four, seven and nine years old, had this
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  Speaker 2: set routine out to the fields by six am, sharp
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  Speaker 2: back home by three pm. And maybe the biggest symbol
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  Speaker 2: of this routine that weekly call for Mubarak every Thursday
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  Speaker 2: five pm.
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  Speaker 1: But that clock just stopped Sunday, December twenty in two
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  Speaker 1: thousand and nine. Neighbors usually saw radio round five pm.
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  Speaker 1: You know, chatting after work, but she wasn't there. The
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  Speaker 1: first thought was pretty innocent, right, Oh, maybe she's feeling sick.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. In a village like that, you don't jump
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  Speaker 2: to the worst conclusion illness made exhaustion. You assume something simple.
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  Speaker 2: But the worry it really started to grow Monday morning,
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  Speaker 2: December twenty. First, the door still locked. That's unusual. But
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  Speaker 2: the real red flag it wasn't the door, it was
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  Speaker 2: the yard.
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  Speaker 1: The yard, how so.
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  Speaker 2: Radio was known for being incredibly tidy, the area outside
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  Speaker 2: her house always spotless. When the neighbors saw it hadn't
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  Speaker 2: been touched, looked neglected for almost two days, well they knew,
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  Speaker 2: they knew something was seriously fundamentally wrong.
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  Speaker 1: They tried knocking, calling your name, just silence. So Mubrock's brother,
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  Speaker 1: he felt he had to do something drastic. He knew
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  Speaker 1: the house, he knew the only way in other than
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  Speaker 1: that locked main door, was over the roof.
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  Speaker 2: It's a chilling image, isn't it, him climbing up, dropping
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  Speaker 2: down through that inner stairwell axis and that's where he
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  Speaker 2: found her radio, right near the bottom of those stairs.
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  Speaker 2: The report said she was drown in a pool of blood.
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  Speaker 2: Her parents just terrifying.
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  Speaker 1: Wow. So he saw that and that was enough.
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  Speaker 2: He didn't look around, didn't check for the kids. He
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  Speaker 2: just immediately backed out, panicked, screaming, raised the alarm, and
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  Speaker 2: that's when law enforcement arrived at what was clearly a
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  Speaker 2: horrific scene.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, let's break down that crime scene, because right away
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  Speaker 1: things didn't quite add up, did they. The police confirmed
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  Speaker 1: how the killer got in the roof.
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  Speaker 2: Just like the brother, which suggests a few things. Someone
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  Speaker 2: who could climb, probably someone familiar with the house layout,
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  Speaker 2: and Radia being right there at the stairs. It means
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  Speaker 2: the attack was instant. The moment she realized someone was inside,
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  Speaker 2: he attacked.
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  Speaker 1: And the attack itself was.
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  Speaker 2: Brutal, incredibly brutal. Stabbed multiple times and then uh slaughtered,
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  Speaker 2: just savage.
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  Speaker 1: And then the children. This is just heartbreaking. Yeah. Investigators
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  Speaker 1: found the three boys, Hosny, Ali and little Taha. They
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  Speaker 1: were together in one room, covered up.
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  Speaker 2: Two of them. The older ones had suffered the same
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  Speaker 2: fate as their mother, stabbed, slaughtered, but the youngest, Taha,
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  Speaker 2: only four years old.
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  Speaker 1: He'd been strangled, strangled, so a different method for him.
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  Speaker 2: Slightly different, yes, strangulation versus the knife, but investigators felt
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  Speaker 2: it was consistent. All the violence pointed to one killer
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  Speaker 2: acting with extreme malice, maybe even a chilling kind of efficiency,
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  Speaker 2: to well to silence everyone.
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  Speaker 1: But here's the weird part, the contradiction that immediately puzzled everyone.
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  Speaker 1: The house looked like a robbery scene, right, messy things
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  Speaker 1: thrown around.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly, It screamed robbery. But then they started looking closer
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  Speaker 2: and absolutely nothing of value was gone.
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  Speaker 1: Nothing. How is that possible after such violence?
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  Speaker 2: That's the million dollar question, isn't it? Radius savings, which
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  Speaker 2: she managed carefully through the post office untouched. The family
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  Speaker 2: had livestock, a cow in the barn next door, also safe.
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  Speaker 2: A typical thief, especially in a rural area, they'd take
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  Speaker 2: the cow, anything easy to convert to cash.
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  Speaker 1: So the brutality, the ransacking, but no theft.
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  Speaker 2: It completely changed the direction of the destigation. This wasn't random,
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  Speaker 2: It wasn't about grabbing valuables. It had to be something personal,
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  Speaker 2: something targeted revenge, maybe extreme envy, or just pure desperate greed,
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  Speaker 2: focused on something specific.
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  Speaker 1: And just imagine Mubari. He gets that routine call on Thursday,
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  Speaker 1: everything's normal. Then three days later he rushes back from
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  Speaker 1: Libya to this nightmare, only to have to tell the police, no, nothing,
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  Speaker 1: nothing is missing. His family wasn't killed for stuff. They
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  Speaker 1: were killed for the sake of killing them.
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  Speaker 2: That question, why why target this mother and her little
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  Speaker 2: boys with such ferocity for apparently no material gain. That's
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  Speaker 2: what pushed investiators away from just looking at the physical
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  Speaker 2: evidence and towards well the people closest to her, the
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  Speaker 2: social circle.
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  Speaker 1: And they did find some crucial physical evidence, didn't they
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  Speaker 1: Stuff that started to narrow things down.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely. Forensics provided two critical pieces. First, the time
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  Speaker 2: of death. They pinned it down to late Saturday night,
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  Speaker 2: sometime between eleven PM and midnight.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, so Saturday night. That means the family was already
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  Speaker 1: deceased inside that lockhouse all day Sunday and Monday morning
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  Speaker 1: when the alarm was finally raised exactly.
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  Speaker 2: And second, the struggle radio fought back hard. They found
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  Speaker 2: skin tissue under her fingernails.
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  Speaker 1: Wow, so she definitely confronted her attacker and drew blood
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  Speaker 1: or tissue.
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  Speaker 2: At least she did, which suggests it wasn't a complete
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  Speaker 2: surprise attack from behind. She faced him and likely recognized him,
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  Speaker 2: prompting that violent immediate reaction from the killer, and maybe
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  Speaker 2: the most vital forensic discovery. They found proof the killer
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  Speaker 2: was physically there and left traces, a blood sample that
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  Speaker 2: didn't belong to the family, and a clear distinct fingerprint
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  Speaker 2: that wasn't from any family member either.
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  Speaker 1: So they had the killer's blood type and fingerprint. They
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  Speaker 1: just needed a name to match.
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  Speaker 2: Precisely, they had the what and the win. Now they
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  Speaker 2: needed the who.
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  Speaker 1: And with no obvious enemies, no financial disputes known outside
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  Speaker 1: the family, the focus had to turn inward, right towards
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  Speaker 1: the village itself, the neighbors, the people Radio talked to every.
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  Speaker 2: Day, especially the women she socialized with, the ones she
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  Speaker 2: might have confided in, because remember, the motive seemed personal,
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  Speaker 2: not random. And this is where a seemingly innocent piece
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  Speaker 2: of neighborhood chat becomes absolutely central. Investigators spoke to Hodjazara,
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  Speaker 2: an older woman living just two houses down from Radia,
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  Speaker 2: and she revealed something incredibly important, something intimate about radius finances.
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  Speaker 1: What was that?
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  Speaker 2: She told them Radio wasn't just managing day to day stuff.
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  Speaker 2: She was savvy and crucially, she had savings, significant savings,
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  Speaker 2: about eighteen thousand Egyptian pounds managed independently.
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  Speaker 1: Eighteen thousand pounds, so we should probably pause on that.
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  Speaker 1: In two thousand and nine in a small Egyptian farming village,
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  Speaker 1: that's a fortune, isn't it.
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  Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely, that's a huge sum, easily two maybe three
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  Speaker 2: years income for an average family there. Back then, it
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  Speaker 2: wasn't just spare cash. It was, like you said, a
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  Speaker 2: small fortune, life changing money for someone in that context.
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  Speaker 1: So suddenly there's a potential motive again greed, but not
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  Speaker 1: random greed, specific greed based on knowing about that specific
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  Speaker 1: amount of money exactly.
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  Speaker 2: And that knowledge pointed the investigation directly at Hadjasara's own
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  Speaker 2: family living right there, two doors away, which.
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  Speaker 1: Brings us to her son, Mohammed. He immediately became a
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  Speaker 1: person of interest. What was his situation?
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  Speaker 2: Mohammad's life was basically screaming desperation. He was married, his
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  Speaker 2: wife was pregnant, which adds pressure, you know, but he
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  Speaker 2: was drowning in debt. He owed a forty one thousand
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  Speaker 2: EGP forty one thousand.
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  Speaker 1: That's more than double what Redia supposedly had.
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  Speaker 2: Saved, way more, and it wasn't just debt. It was urgent.
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  Speaker 2: He had outstanding checks and creditors were closing in how urgent,
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  Speaker 2: very Just four days before the murders, one of his
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  Speaker 2: main creditors confronted him, gave him an ultimatum, threatened legal
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  Speaker 2: action immediately. Mohammad apparently panic and promised you'd have the
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  Speaker 2: money within three days.
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  Speaker 1: Three days, which puts the deadline right around Saturday night,
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  Speaker 1: the night of.
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  Speaker 2: The murders, precisely. The timing was disturbingly per so.
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  Speaker 1: They bring Mohammed in for questioning.
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  Speaker 2: How did he react cool as a cucumber. Initially played
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  Speaker 2: the part of the shocked grieving neighbor, said he loved
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  Speaker 2: the family, couldn't believe what happened, and he gave a
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  Speaker 2: very frame alibi claimed he was asleep in his own
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  Speaker 2: bed all Saturday night.
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  Speaker 1: A solid alibi if true, But his.
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  Speaker 2: Wife told a very different story. When interviewed separately, she confirmed, yes,
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  Speaker 2: Mohammad did go out late Saturday night and he came
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  Speaker 2: back late and the gall abea he was wearing thus
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  Speaker 2: a traditional long rope men were it had bloodstains on it.
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  Speaker 1: Bloodstains? What was his explanation for that?
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  Speaker 2: He tried to wave it away, told his wife he'd
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  Speaker 2: been helping a friend who got hurt in some kind
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  Speaker 2: of car accident, a flimsy story.
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  Speaker 1: It seems flimsy indeed, especially when the police have forensic evidence.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly the final nail on the coffin. They confronted Mohammad
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  Speaker 2: with the facts. His fingerprint matched the one found at
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  Speaker 2: the scene, his blood type matched the non family blood
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  Speaker 2: sample recovered from Radi's.
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  Speaker 1: Home, and faced with that direct physical link, he.
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  Speaker 2: Broke completely collapse and confessed to everything.
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  Speaker 1: So laid out for us what was the story?
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  Speaker 2: He told It was driven by that toxic mix of
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  Speaker 2: gossip and desperation. He admitted he'd overheard his own mother,
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  Speaker 2: Hadja Zara talking about Radia's eighteen thousand pounds, talking about
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  Speaker 2: her managing money well, Mubarak working abroad, the livestock painting
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  Speaker 2: a picture of relative wealth.
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  Speaker 1: So the gossip fueled the idea.
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  Speaker 2: It planted the seed. He got fixated on that money
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  Speaker 2: as the solution to his debt crisis. He decided Saturday
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  Speaker 2: night was the time, grabbed a knife, used his knowledge
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  Speaker 2: of the village layout to get onto the roof around
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  Speaker 2: eleven pm. He probably expected everyone to.
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  Speaker 1: Be asleep, but Radia wasn't asleep.
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  Speaker 2: No, Tragically, she was still awake as he came down
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  Speaker 2: those stairs, she saw him, confronted him, and in that
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  Speaker 2: moment she must have recognized him her neighbor's.
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  Speaker 1: Sin, and that recognition sealed her fate.
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  Speaker 2: It seems so his plan probably shifted instantly from stealth
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  Speaker 2: robbery to violent silencing. He attacked her right there, stabbing her,
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  Speaker 2: slaughtering her brutally.
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  Speaker 1: But the noise it woke the children.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, the commotion woke the three boys. And here's the
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  Speaker 2: absolute core of the tragedy. They woke up, they saw him,
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  Speaker 2: and crucially, they knew him. They recognized Mohammed oh No.
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  Speaker 1: So he realized.
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  Speaker 2: He realized he couldn't leave witnesses, especially witnesses who could
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  Speaker 2: identify him without a shadow of a doubt. So he
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  Speaker 2: made the horrific decision to eliminate them all. He killed
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  Speaker 2: them one by one, the two older boys with the
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  Speaker 2: knife just like their mother, and the youngest, little Taha,
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  Speaker 2: he strangled him.
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  Speaker 1: It's devastating After all.
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  Speaker 2: That, After the unimaginable violence, he frantically searched the house
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  Speaker 2: for the eighteen thousand pounds, the money that had driven
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  Speaker 2: him to do this, but he found nothing. Radia, being careful,
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  Speaker 2: must have kept it somewhere else, somewhere secure, maybe the
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  Speaker 2: post office, like suspected.
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  Speaker 1: So the entire horrific act was for nothing, financially.
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  Speaker 2: Clearly for nothing. He found no money. He climbed back
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  Speaker 2: out via the roof, went back to his own house
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  Speaker 2: just two doors down, changed, presumably hid the galibia, And
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  Speaker 2: then for the next fifteen days he lived among the
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  Speaker 2: grieving villagers, pretending to share their shock and sorrow.
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  Speaker 1: Fifteen days, Yeah, living that lie. The level of coldness
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  Speaker 1: is staggering. When the truth came out that it was Mohammed,
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  Speaker 1: the neighbor, the son of the woman Radia confided in,
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  Speaker 1: the shock and Abu al Bas must have been immense.
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  Speaker 2: It shattered the community, absolute disbelief, But the legal process
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  Speaker 2: moved forward. The trial took about a year. Mohammed actually
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  Speaker 2: tried to retract his confession later on.
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  Speaker 1: Did that work.
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  Speaker 2: No, The forensic evidence, the fingerprint, the blood was concrete,
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  Speaker 2: and his wife's testimony about him being out late returning
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  Speaker 2: with bloodstains it was too compelling. He was found guilty,
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  Speaker 2: sentenced to death.
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  Speaker 1: It's the brutality that really stands out, isn't it. Even
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  Speaker 1: beyond the initial confrontation with radia.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, the level of malice is profound. It wasn't just
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  Speaker 2: panic slaughtering her like that and then systematically killing the
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  Speaker 2: children who posed no physical threat but knew him. It's
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  Speaker 2: just something deeper than just greed, intense envy, maybe hatred
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  Speaker 2: for the stability and small prosperity her family represented, which
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  Speaker 2: he's so desperately lacked.
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  Speaker 1: So when we step back, what's the takeaway here for
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  Speaker 1: you listening? This case is such a stark reminder, isn't
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  Speaker 1: it how easily vulnerability can hide beneath the surface, even
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  Speaker 1: in places that feel safe. That tiny detail hodges arm
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  Speaker 1: and mentioning the savings Probably just casual talk became lethal
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  Speaker 1: when someone nearby was desperate and filled with well envy.
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  Speaker 2: It highlights the danger of that combination desperation, proximity and
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: specific knowledge. And maybe the final thought to leave you
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  Speaker 2: with is about the sheer awful calculus of his actions.
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  Speaker 2: He was facing a forty one thousand AGP debt. He
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: killed four people trying and failing to get eighteen thousand EGP.
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  Speaker 2: In the end, what did he achieve? He didn't solve
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  Speaker 2: his debt, He destroyed a family, He destroyed his own
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  Speaker 2: family's future as unborn child's future. He traded everything for
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  Speaker 2: a few minutes of horrific violence that gained him absolutely
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  Speaker 2: nothing but his own death sentence, a truly devastating cost