Man jailed for life over wife’s murder during lockdown

LONDON: A bus driver has been jailed for at least 22 years for killing his wife in the midst of an “intense rage” during the lockdown.

Hussein Egal, 66, battered 57-year-old Maryan Ismail to death with a hammer, meat cleaver, table leg, pots and pans and ladder.

Ms Ismail’s mutilated body was found covered with a blanket at her flat in Edmonton, north London, on April 6 last year. The school cleaner had suffered 70 injuries to her body, with the most severe to her head and chest.

Egal told police she had threatened to throw him out for having Covid-19. He admitted carrying out the killing but denied it was murder.

An Old Bailey jury rejected his defence of diminished responsibility and found him guilty of murder after deliberating for two hours.

On Friday, Judge Mark Lucraft QC jailed Egal for life with a minimum term of 22 years. He said Ms Ismail had suffered a “sustained and vicious attack”.

He said: “Quite what your motivation for this attack was, only you will really know. In the period immediately before the attack, and in the period that followed, you largely carried on with your life.

“Your actions show that you had little if any remorse immediately after the events – your thoughts then were entirely about yourself and not Maryan.”

On Egal’s Covid-19 claims, he said tests had shown Ms Ismail did not have the virus and the defendant had refused to be tested. However, despite his claim that he had the virus in March last year and was not working, records showed he was working up to and including March 27.

The judge also highlighted a psychiatric report which found Egal was not suffering a major mental disorder.

He added: “It seems to me that, on all the evidence here, you were someone in the middle of an intense rage at the moment of the killing and for whatever reason were intent on killing your wife.”

The victim was described by a close friend as a “kind and calm person with a good heart”. Her son, who lives in Holland, was unable to attend his mother’s funeral.

Judge Lucraft said: “One can only imagine the impact of losing a mother in these circumstances.”