A suspected cannibal who killed a 90-year-old man in southern France apparently to eat his heart and tongue was a former soldier who served in Afghanistan, an army source said on Monday.
The 26-year-old homeless man, who claimed to hear voices, had passed army medical tests without any problem, said a senior source at the Marine Infantry Tank Regiment, a light cavalry regiment of the French army.
The source at the regiment, one of the army’s most decorated units, said the man had “posed no problems during his stint” in Afghanistan, where he obtained the grade of corporal.
When he returned, the man refused an army offer to extend his contract, saying he wanted a painting job, the source said, without specifying when the man had served.
The man on Thursday allegedly attacked the elderly man in a tiny hamlet, smashing his head with a metal object, and then extracted his heart and tongue to cook and eat.
Some remains of cooked meat were found on a plate with some beans. Post-mortem tests have shown that a part of the heart and the tongue were ripped out, but it is not yet clear if the meat found was of human origin.
The suspect allegedly assaulted another man, breaking his shoulder, before being arrested.
Psychiatric tests after the arrest showed the man suffered from delusions.
Indonesia yesterday began enforcing its newly ratified penal code, replacing a Dutch-era criminal law that had governed the country for more than 80 years and marking a major shift in its legal landscape. Since proclaiming independence in 1945, the Southeast Asian country had continued to operate under a colonial framework widely criticized as outdated and misaligned with Indonesia’s social values. Efforts to revise the code stalled for decades as lawmakers debated how to balance human rights, religious norms and local traditions in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation. The 345-page Indonesian Penal Code, known as the KUHP, was passed in 2022. It
US President Donald Trump on Friday said Washington was “locked and loaded” to respond if Iran killed protesters, prompting Tehran to warn that intervention would destabilize the region. Protesters and security forces on Thursday clashed in several Iranian cities, with six people reported killed, the first deaths since the unrest escalated. Shopkeepers in Tehran on Sunday last week went on strike over high prices and economic stagnation, actions that have since spread into a protest movement that has swept into other parts of the country. If Iran “violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to
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