A MOTHER on the run from Swiss authorities who stabbed her infant son in the toilets at Torrevieja hospital has been jailed for 11 years.
Katharina Katit-Stäheli, who was 40 at the time, does not believe in traditional medicine and had refused to let medics in Zürich continue treating her 10-month-old baby, who was born with water on the brain.
Swiss social services made the child a ward of court in January 2014, but Frau Katit-Stäheli kidnapped him from hospital and went on the run across Europe in her father's Jeep Cherokee.
Eventually, she reached south-eastern Spain, and a woman spotted her at Carrefour supermarket in the Habaneras shopping centre in Torrevieja, in the province of Alicante and close to the Murcia border.
Katit-Stäheli was arrested and taken with the baby, Dylan, to the nearest hospital for treatment.
She asked nurses for permission to bath him and change his nappy, and shut herself in the toilets while the Guardia Civil kept watch.
Nobody realised she had been carrying a knife in Dylan's nappy bag, and she slit the child's throat and then her own.
Katit-Stäheli's suicide attempt failed, but Dylan did not survive.
A Swiss newspaper said the mother had refused to let the Zürich hospital perform a second shunt on Dylan to drain the fluid on his brain, and did not give him his prescribed medication as she only believes in 'natural' remedies.
She had told her father Othmar Stäheli before fleeing the country – and has since told police and the court – that she had run away to 'protect Dylan from the doctors'.
This week, in the dock, Katit-Stäheli said Swiss medics kept 'carrying out unnecessary tests' on her baby, including MRI scans, and that she feared they were 'experimenting' with him.
She said he was 'perfectly healthy' other than the water on the brain, 'had no symptoms' and 'was able to talk', and blames the medication she had for a mouth infection before she knew she was pregnant for the child's condition.
Katit-Stäheli says she does not remember killing her son and attempting to take her own life very well, but believes she panicked as she thought the hospital would take her son from her and use him as a guinea pig.
The accused will be interviewed by a court psychiatrist to ascertain whether diminished responsibility could be a factor.
She is said to suffer from psychiatric illness, which has led to her sentence being reduced from 17 to 11 years.
