Mohammed Adam Omar

Mohammed Adam Omar Ishaak (born 1952 - July 20, 2001), known as The Sana'a Ripper, was a Sudanese murderer and alleged serial killer. A morgue assistant, Omar was convicted of killing two medical students in Yemen's Sana'a University and later executed for their murders. He additionally claimed another 49 victims across several countries in the Arab world before retracting his statements, prompting various theories whether he was truly responsible for the crimes he confessed to.

On June 20, 2001, after receiving 80 lashes for drinking alcohol, which is prohibited by Sharia law, Omar was executed by firing squad with five shots to the heart, but as he was still moving, one final to the head. The execution was seen by family members of the victims, but policemen prevented any recording of the event. Afterwards, Mohammed's body was taken away by ambulance, and buried in an undisclosed location.

In May 1999, the bodies of 21 female students were found buried either on campus or in the sewage system of Sana'a University. Omar was arrested in May 2000, on suspicion of killing 16 of them, whereupon he tried to commit suicide by cutting his wrists with his spectacles, but was overwhelmed. Just a day after being detained, he confessed to raping, killing and mutilating five women, citing his inability to "resist their beauty" and desire to send them to Heaven as his motive. Much to the investigators' horror, he went on to confess the murders of 51 women, with additional victims in his native Sudan, Kuwait, Chad, Lebanon, Jordan and the Central African Republic, starting in 1975. He explained that he lured the women, who were mostly medical students, to the morgue, under the guise of helping with their studies. In there, he killed them with a blow to the head. After that, he cut off the hands and feet, dissolved the bodies in chemicals and kept the bones as mementos, but categorically denied having sold any lasting body parts. Stealing gold from the victims was also given as a side motive.

The news spread like wildfire among the tabloid press, who coined the nickname "The Sana'a Ripper" for Mohammed. Omar expressed his desire to be punished for his crimes, saying that he wouldn't be able to control himself if let go, even denying an attorney for his trial. At said trial, it was alleged by the prosecutor that Omar had been aided by a female Yemeni accomplice, whom he later murdered as well. However, inconsistencies began to appear in his story: one of them being the surprising appearance of a woman whom Omar claimed he'd killed. He then retracted his confession twice: on the first occasion, he denied the murders in other countries and admitted only 16 murders in Yemen; and on the second, he discarded the first admission, only admitting two murders: those of nursing students Hosn Ahmad Attiya (Yemeni, killed in 1995) and Zainab Saud Aziz (Iraqi, killed in December 1999). In the end, he was sentenced to death for the murders of Attiya and Aziz, and was to be put to death in front of the Sana'a University, in front of thousands of onlookers.

One of the officers working on the case, Col. Sawadah Omar Al Ayashi, told Gulf News reporters that Adam was an agent for Mossad, Israel's national intelligence agency, since the 1970s. According to Ayashi, he had entered Yemen on numerous occasions and was even imprisoned for six months in the mid-1970s, before being deported, later entering South Yemen in 1984 in order to spy on Palestinian military camps stationed there. In addition, Ayashi claimed that Omar had infiltrated Fateh-Intifada, a Palestinian splinter faction based in Damascus, spying on their operations in Lebanon during the 1980s, before moving to Jordan. Some policemen also said that they had confiscated several fake passports belonging to Mohammed Adam Omar, one of them presenting him as a Jordanian national named "John Adam".