A Queens man who admitted to stabbing his wife upwards of 250 times wants to make sure people don't get the wrong impression of him: he's no Hannibal Lecter.
Mohammad Solaiman, 52, was sentenced to 15-years-to-life yesterday for the murder of his wife Shahida Sultanna, who he stabbed more than 250 times in their home in Jamaica, Queens in December 2007. Their four-year-old daughter was in the next room while the murder took place. Sister-in-law Ferdousi Begum broke down when she took the stand yesterday, accusing Solaiman of eating his wife's innards: "He took out her liver and her lungs and he ate it. He drank her blood. Her daughter told me that."
Despite the outburst, both prosecutors and defense lawyers don't believe Solaiman ate his wife: "He may have killed his wife but he didn't turn into a cannibal," his lawyer John Scarpa said. Scarpa had argued that Solaiman had suffered years of physical abuse at the hands of his 32-year-old wife, but there were no records of any abuse. Though Queens Supreme Court Justice Richard Buchter agreed Solaiman wasn't a cannibal, he did castigate him for a different kind of barbarity: "In a final act of savagery he exposed his four-year-old daughter to this horrific murder scene. If that's not savagery, I don't know what is."
