The family of a teacher who was shot on Tuesday at the school in Makkah where he worked has called for his killer to be beheaded, according to a brother of the victim. The accused man, meanwhile, is to undergo examinations to determine his mental stability. Teacher Fayez Al-Shanbari was shot four times with a pistol in front of students by his 35-year-old killer. The gunman, who earned a living as a taxi driver, told investigators that he was induced to murder by a psychological disorder he had been suffering since the death of his mother 17 years ago, and the Commission for Investigation and Prosecution (CIP) is to now send him to the Psychiatric Hospital in Taif for examination to determine the validity of his claims. A brother of the killer said he had stopped taking medication two weeks before the incident and that hospital records existed to prove his illness. The brother added that he had not personally spoken to him for five years due to his “anger at attempts to take him to hospitals or to receive ruqia treatment”. Al-Shanbari was a practitioner of “ruqia”, providing healing through the recitation of Qur'anic verses, and had reportedly performed treatment on his killer over a long period of time for insomnia and nightmares. The killer told police that the night before he committed the murder he had been unable to sleep. Lawyer and legal consultant Hamid Mohammed Al-Abadi said that capital punishment may not be carried out on minors or persons not of sound mind, but added that the fact that “the killer asked for his victim by name when he went to the school, and that by his own admission received treatment from him for his mental problems, only goes to show that he was in a sound state of mind and responsible for his actions.”
