Nanny who decapitated child in Moscow ‘did not act alone’

A nanny accused of killing and decapitating a four-year-old girl was not acting on her own, Russian prosecutors have said.

Gyulchekhra Bobokulova, 38, from Uzbekistan, brandished the child’s head outside a subway station in Moscow, on Monday morning.

Before a court sanctioned her arrest for two months, prosecutors told the court they believe that individuals who “incited” her to carry out the killing were still at large.

Investigators said Bobokulova appeared to be mentally unstable.

At times she smiled, then grimaced, as she flashed a few golden teeth. Muscovites have been placing flowers and children’s toys outside the subway station in memory of the little girl.

The motive for the slaying is not known. The child’s parents are a middle-class couple, seemingly without government connections or influence.

The nanny’s religion is not known, either, but Bobokulova wore a head-covering, and witnesses said she shouted ‘Allahu akbar’, while waving the bloody head.

In videos posted on Russian news websites, she was heard shouting “I am a terrorist”, in Russian. None of the main Russian television channels reported on the grisly scene.

Russian president, Vladimir Putin’s spokesman denied that the news was withheld at the request of the Kremlin, or out of concerns that the killing could stoke ethnic tensions in a country with many Muslim citizens and migrant workers.

Moments before she appeared at court, the nanny told reporters that “Allah ordered” the killing.

“It was what Allah ordered,” the 38-year-old told journalists as she was brought into the district court to have her arrest confirmed and extended.

She said: “Allah is sending a second prophet to give news of peace.”

“Hi to everyone,” said the mother-of-three, waving at the crowd of journalists in the gallery.

State news agency, RIA Novosti, citing a law enforcement source, said Bobokulova had recently been brainwashed by her Tajik lover, who was apparently a radical Muslim.

The mass-circulation Moskovsky Komsomolets, citing Uzbek police, said the woman had suffered from schizophrenia for 15 years.

Bobokulova has been undergoing psychiatric examinations since her detention.

The murdered girl, Nastya, was born in 2011, the judge said. Investigators had initially estimated that she was three or four years old.