Corps news – Embassy 18 – July/August 2009

Diplomat’s son detained for stabbing father

The high-flying son of an African diplomat has been sentenced to an indefinite hospital order after stabbing his church-going father to death in a row over his studies.

Architecture student Beza Mbeboh, 29, admitted killing his father, Kitts Mbeboh, 60, who was cultural attaché at the Cameroonian High Commission in London.

Prosecutors accepted his guilty plea to manslaughter due to diminished responsibility, after he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

The court heard that the father had failed to press charges against his son, despite a series of attacks, because he did not want him to have a criminal record. The killer had also received a formal harassment letter from police after he started stalking a female work colleague.

In sentencing, Judge David Paget said to Mbeboh: “Although you are normally a placid man I would be failing in my duty to the public if I did not make an order without limit of time.”