Beheaded Russian child is revenge for Putin's Syria strikes – suspect

A woman suspected to have beheaded a child in her care said she acted to avenge the killing of Muslims in the Kremlin’s campaign of air strikes in Syria.

In a video footage posted online on Thursday, 38-year-old Gulchekhra Bobokulova of Muslim-majority Uzbekistan, gave her first detailed explanation of an incident which state TV channels chose not to report.

“I took revenge against those who spilled blood; Putin spilled blood, planes carried out bombings.

“Why are Muslims being killed and they also want to live,” Bobokulova, who was said to have brandished the severed head outside a Moscow metro station, said.

Police on Monday held Bobokulova, who had been working as a nanny for a Moscow family, after she wandered around a Moscow street holding the infant’s severed head in the air and shouting Islamist slogans.

The child she is suspected of murdering was a four-year-old girl.

The Kremlin launched its campaign of air strikes in Syria on Sept. 30 in support of President Bashar al-Assad, an intervention that altered the course of the conflict there.

A Russian passenger plane was blown out of the skies above Egypt on Oct. 31, killing all 224 people on board. Islamic State said it had carried out the attack in revenge for Russia’s Syria campaign.

Investigators in what the Russian media have dubbed the case of “the bloody nanny” quickly raised the possibility that Bobokulova was mentally ill.