A French prisoner killed his cellmate and devoured his lung after authorities ignored his appeals for psychological assistance, he told a court as his trial opened on Monday.
Nicolas Cocaign, 39, told judges in the northern city of Rouen that he had had a long history of mental problems even before he sliced open his victim, ripped out his lung and fried it on a makeshift stove in their cell.
“No one was listening to me,” the bearded and tattooed detainee told the court. “I made several appeals for help, saying I was a man capable of being dangerous. I took action, and then they took me seriously.”
PHOTO: AFP
Cocaign is charged with killing cellmate Thierry Baudry in January 2007 by punching and kicking him, stabbing him with a pair of scissors and suffocating him with a rubbish bag.
Prosecutors say he sliced open Baudry’s chest with a razor blade, removed a rib and pulled out an organ which he at first believed to the man’s heart, but was in fact a lung.
He is said to have eaten part of the lung raw and then fried the rest of it with some onions.
Under interrogation before the trial, Cocaign said he had turned cannibal because he wanted to take the victim’s soul, but in court on Monday he stressed his troubled background and mental instability.
Born in 1971, he was abandoned by his 21-year-old homeless mother and cared for by the state until he was adopted aged three. From the age of six he was already under the care of a psychologist.
Reports from his childhood suggest he had difficulty telling right from wrong and his mental difficulties worsened when he was allegedly raped, aged 13. After this he developed “violent sexual compulsions.”
He was convicted of drug possession at age 22 and was later hospitalized on several occasions with mental illness. He complained to the court that he was not given drug treatment after release, despite asking for it.
“My compulsions were still there, so …” he said.
Mental health experts are to testify during the course of the trial this week as to whether Cocaign was sufficiently sane to face criminal charge for his acts. A verdict is expected tomorrow.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS