A jihadist madwoman dubbed the Reem Island Ghost has been sentenced to die in Abu Dhabi today for the bloody mayhem she perpetrated in December 2014.
Emirati-born religious fanatic, Alaa Bader Abdullah Al Hashemi, was 29 when she stalked and stabbed to death an American schoolteacher in a public bathroom at an upscale shopping plaza, dressed head to toe in black.
United Arab Emirate officials determined the 37-year-old mother of three slain at Al Reem Island’s Boutik Mall was unacquainted with her murderer and the attack was unprovoked.
Al Hashemi was additionally found guilty of bomb-making and the detonation of a homemade incendiary device at an Egyptian-American professor’s home on the same day of the mall knifing.
The court also convicted the defendant of distributing terrorist propaganda online, as well as funding both ISIS and al-Qaeda terror organizations in Yemen.
Monday’s ruling by Abu Dhabi’s Federal Supreme Court condemning the Reem Island Ghost to die is technically final and cannot be appealed, although the prisoner’s life can still be spared by presidential decree.
International critics of the proceedings that led to today’s death penalty decision complain these were largely held in private and that the accused killer suffers from mental aberrations which include both visual and auditory hallucinations.
Despite those objections and her own admission that she often sees "unreal visions" and "ghost-like people" commanding her to do violence, the court deemed Al Hashemi psychologically fit to stand trial for crimes against the state and capital murder.
A date for her execution hasn’t been announced yet.
