Society

Judgment

AGENCIES | EITB AVERAGE

The Bilbao City Council social worker who cared for Maguette Mbeugou during the nine months prior to her murder has assured that, “without any doubt, she was subject to the accused, who exercised control over her and of whom she was afraid.”

1:26

In the third session of the trial to clarify the murder of Maguette Mbeugou has declared the social worker of the Bilbao City Council who attended her for months and her family doctor. Both have reported that the 25-year-old girl suffered mistreatment and threats from her husband -Bara N.-.

Mbeugou was stabbed to death by her husband -Bara N.- and in the presence of his two daughters in a house in the capital of Biscay on September 24, 2018.

The Prosecutor’s Office and the different accusations on behalf of the victim’s brother, the Bilbao City Council and the Bizkaia Provincial Council consider the husband and father of the girls to be the author of this murder, and of the crimes of abandonment of minors and habitual abuse, for those who ask penalties close to 40 years, while the defense maintains that it was the wife who initiated the attack and that, in the struggle, the defendant killed her, for which he asks for 8 years for a crime of homicide.

Today the social worker of the City Council that treated Maguette Mbeugou during the nine months prior to her murder and after she went to the Basurto Hospital with an anxiety attack. There he told the toilets that suffered physical, mental and economic abuse for years.

Later, she related to the worker that her husband slapped, pushed and kicked her, and that at some point he had threatened to kill her while saying: “Either I kill myself, or I kill you “.

The woman filed a complaint with the court of gender violence and asked for protection, but the husband was acquitted and the justice denied him protection.

According to the testimony of this worker, Maguette “Without any doubt, she was subject to the accused, who exercised control over her and whom she was afraid of” and she verbalized “clearly” that she wanted a divorce, but was held back by the fact that her husband threatened to take her daughters to Senegal and never see them again.

Along the same lines, the family doctor of the marriage, who has related that in the months prior to the murder, the woman told her that her husband “treated her badly” and cryingly asked him to take her out of the house.

“I was very anguished and did not want to wait any longer,” she said, and stated that she contacted the social workers and they told her that the protocol on victims of gender violence was activated, but that she had to wait “a bit” because they were organizing an “orderly exit” from the house, which would prevent the husband from “taking advantage to take the girls away from her.”

In today’s session they have also declared several ertzainas who participated in the arrest of the accused and the investigation of the case.

According to reports, after killing his wife, Bara N. went to Mutriku at the home of a friend. There they arrested him when he tried to escape through a window of the house. At first, he told the agents that he had had “a problem with his wife and that he was the perpetrator”, but later, at the police station, he did not say more and his behavior was “cold and absent.”

“It was as if the film was not with him, as if you were talking to him about the weather. He did not ask about his daughters, only about how his situation was,” explained one of the ertzainas.

The trial will continue tomorrow with the testimony of more witnesses.