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CRIME

Frenchwoman ‘insane’ when she stabbed Perth man

An Australian judge on Tuesday ruled a young Frenchwoman not guilty of the bizarre stabbing murder of an elderly man in his Perth home, finding she was insane at the time of the killing.

Valentina Marie Strabach, 22, pleaded not guilty to stabbing Murray Vernon Quartermaine more than 200 times with a pair of scissors in his home in Western Australia state in January 2011 due to her unsound mind.

“I conclude that… the accused was insane at the time of the killing of Mr Quartermaine and is not criminally responsible for her actions,” Supreme Court of Western Australia Commissioner Kevin Sleight said in his judgement.

Under questioning by police, Strabach, who had arrived in Australia only weeks before the killing, said she felt compelled to commit the murder because she held the delusional belief Quartermaine was a paedophile.

She said she met 79-year-old when she was lost, and he offered to give her a lift to where she was staying. She then asked to go to his home because she wanted to see if he was a child sex offender.

Once there, Strabach found a pair of scissors that she used to stab him repeatedly, leaving him with chest wounds, and perforating his lungs, bowel, liver and jugular.

She also amputated his genitalia and both his big toes.

Sleight said he was satisfied Strabach was suffering from a mental illness in the form of paranoid schizophrenia at the time of the murder, and she was influenced by hallucinations ordering her to kill him.

“It must be stressed that there was absolutely no basis for the accused concluding that Mr Quartermaine was a paedophile,” Sleight said.

“However, in her psychotic state the accused had developed a delusional obsession about paedophilia.”

The court was told that Strabach, reportedly a dual Australian-French citizen, had previously sought medical help in France and was prescribed strong medication, but stopped taking it as she was unable to function properly.

She will be detained at a mental health hospital in Perth until she is released by an order of the Western Australian governor.

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CRIME

France blocks fake Ukraine war recruitment website

French authorities have uncovered a website for a fake recruitment drive purportedly seeking French volunteers to fight for Ukraine against the Russian invasion, the defence ministry said on Thursday.

France blocks fake Ukraine war recruitment website

The site has now been taken down by French services, a government source, who asked not to be named, told AFP without elaborating.

The site had said that 200,000 French people were invited to “enlist in Ukraine”, with immigrants given priority.

A link to the site – that resembled the French army’s genuine recruitment portal – had been posted on X, formerly Twitter, the French defence ministry said.

“The site is a fake government site,” the ministry said, also on X, “and has been reposted by malevolent accounts as part of a disinformation campaign”.

The ministry did not say who they thought might be responsible. But a source close to the government told AFP initial evidence pointed to communications operations linked to Russian mercenary group Wagner.

“The accounts used and the technical data behind them, these are the people we know”, the source said.

“These people are still there and remain very focused on Ukraine. The subject of the French army is something that annoys them a lot.”

Separately, a government official speaking on condition of anonymity said the site bore “the hallmarks of a Russian or pro-Russian effort as part of a disinformation campaign claiming that the French army is preparing to send troops to Ukraine”.

French President Emmanuel Macron angered the Russian leadership last month by hardening his tone on the conflict sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In recent weeks he has refused to rule out sending ground troops and insisted that Europe has to do all that is necessary for a Russian defeat.

France has already accused Russia of waging a disinformation campaign against it.

The official told AFP that similar recent examples of disinformation posts included pictures of French army convoys wrongly presented as moving towards the Ukrainian border.

The fake website invited potential recruits to contact “unit commander Paul” for information about joining.

The defence ministry and government cyber units are investigating, ministry staff told AFP.

The French government has recently stepped up efforts to denounce and fight what it says are Russian disinformation and destabilisation campaigns aimed at undermining French public support for Ukraine in its war against Russia.

“Russia is asserting itself as the most aggressive player in the information field,” Marc-Antoine Brillant, the head of Viginum, an agency mandated to detect digital disinformation campaigns, said in an interview with French daily Le Figaro.

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