A 40-year-old man has been accused of beating his ex-wife’s four-year-old son to death after she had revealed that the child wasn’t his. The suspect identified as Jean-Charles Artaban, had reportedly killed the victim identified as, Matheo, who he had once thought was his son, before decapitating him and feeding his head to dogs, then burning the remaining parts of his body at his home on Jean Robert Street in Beaulieu in Saint-Benoit, Madagascar on June 17, 2013.
According to Scoop, Arteban had reportedly committed the crime after he had been told by his ex wife, Yasmin that Matheo wasn’t his, and the gruesome scene had only been discovered by the emergency services when Yasmin had called them in a panic, begging for them to save her son ‘s life. The suspect is reported to have taken a strain of cannabis, called ‘zamal’ in the local creole dialect, on the fateful evening when the gruesome events had taken place.
The reports further reveal that during the Police interrogation following his arrest, Artaban had said he didn’t remember what had happened that night. Arteban revealed that he remembered beating Yasmine after she had told him Matheo wasn’t his and remembered that she had run away, leaving the boy behind but that was all he could remeber. Arteban was reportedly found guilty of murder, acts of torture, and barbarity following his arrest and court trail, bagging life imprisonment.
This case becomes the first incident of a life sentence being handed down in the French island of Reunion, off the coast of Madagascar, since 2003. Psychiatric experts reportedly reveal that Arteban is incapable of “showing any regret or any empathy,” adding that, throughout the two-day trial, he had simply remained still and unmoved in the dock.
