Supreme court demands new psychiatric assessment of Afghan killer

Portugal’s Supreme Court of Justice has ordered a new forensic assessment – with the trial to be reopened – to determine the criminal responsibility of the Afghan father-of-three convicted of killing two women at the Ismaili Centre in Lisbon in 2023.

According to the judgement, the expert assessment must be “a collegial psychiatric assessment, involving a specialist in psychology”.

“Several provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure in complex cases, particularly those involving a diagnosis of schizophrenia and the assessment of personality disorders, in this instance psychopathy, given the grey area in which such cases may fall, call for a collegial or interdisciplinary approach to expert assessments,” the judges emphasise.

This is the second time in four months that the Supreme Court of Justice has ordered a partial retrial of 31-year-old Abdul Bashir who stabbed two women to death who had ostensibly been helping him in his adaptation to life in Portugal.

Bashir was sentenced in June last year to the maximum terms of 25 years’ imprisonment, contrary to the Public Prosecutor’s Office’s view that, as he was not criminally responsible, he should be detained for a minimum of three years.

In February 2026, the Supreme Court of Justice quashed the initial judgement, ordering a retrial, which saw the Central Criminal Court of Lisbon uphold the 25-year prison sentence shortly afterwards.

Both the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the defence however appealed to the Supreme Court of Justice, which has now essentially ordered the trial to be reopened.

In their judgment, the judges state that this retrial will be held to determine the consequences of the Afghan national’s criminal responsibility, or lack thereof, which, in practice, will affect not the conviction itself, but only the sentence to be imposed.

At the heart of the debate is the fact that the court of first instance gave greater weight, on both occasions, to the expert opinion of a psychologist who, unlike that of a psychiatrist, maintains that Abdul Bashir was not suffering from a mental disorder when, on March 28, 2023, he fatally stabbed two women, aged 24 and 49, who were working in the refugee support service at the Ismaili Centre, and attempted to attack other visitors.

The defendant has alternated between prison and pre-trial detention since he was arrested on the day of the crime and, should the legal time limit for his detention expire in the meantime, he is subject to a European arrest warrant issued by Greece on suspicion of potentially serious crimes committed in that country (involving the death of his own wife), valid until 15 May 2028, as clarified by the Superior Council of the Judiciary in February.

Source material: LUSA

Natasha Donn

Journalist for the Portugal Resident.