A father who murdered his two young children has been transferred to a women’s prison after beginning to identify as transgender. Paulus Said Foukaih Abdelshahed, an Egyptian national who had been living in Sweden for almost two decades, is serving a life sentence for the killings.
According to the original indictment filed by the Prosecution Authority in November 2024, police and ambulance services were dispatched to the family’s home in Södertälje, Sweden, on the morning of April 23 following a 112 emergency call made by Abdelshahed himself. He reportedly told dispatchers that his two children – a boy and a girl, both under the age of 10 – were not breathing.
When officers arrived at the residence, they found both children dead. Abdelshahed was later arrested at along with the children’s mother, but she was quickly released after investigators ruled her out as a suspect and determined that the murders had occurred when Abdelshahed was alone with the children.
Court documents and subsequent reporting state that prosecutors determined Abdelshahed had placed bags over each child’s head and pumped helium into the bags through a hose, depriving them of oxygen. The prosecution described the killings as intentional, carefully planned, and particularly ruthless. Investigators recovered items from the home consistent with this method, including bags, tape, and gas-related equipment.
Abdelshahed admitted to killing the children during the investigation, an admission prosecutors cited alongside forensic findings and other physical evidence.
During the pre-trial phase, he underwent an initial psychiatric screening under Sweden’s Section 7 procedure, which is used to determine whether a full forensic psychiatric evaluation is necessary. According to Dagens Juridik, the preliminary assessment raised concerns about his mental state, prompting authorities to order a comprehensive psychiatric examination.
That examination ultimately concluded that Abdelshahed did not suffer from a serious mental disorder of the kind that would justify sentencing him to compulsory psychiatric care rather than prison.
The indictment was formally filed on November 11, 2024, charging Abdelshahed with two counts of murder. One month later, the Södertälje District Court convicted him on both counts and sentenced him to life imprisonment and deportation in the event he was ever released. But Abdelshahed quickly appealed the verdict, arguing that the court should have imposed psychiatric care rather than a life sentence.
On February 27, 2025, the Svea Court of Appeal upheld the district court’s judgment in full. According to Omni’s summary of the appellate ruling, the court agreed that the murders were particularly ruthless and confirmed that the psychiatric evidence did not meet the legal threshold for diversion to psychiatric care.
But the case is now wrangling with its latest disturbing development. Last week, it was announced that Abdelshahed had been moved to a women’s prison after beginning to identify as transgender.
According to TV4 Nyheterna, Abdelshahed applied to change his legal sex marker to “female” last fall, and his application was granted. He also changed his legal name to “Lily.” Shortly after, he was moved to an unnamed women’s prison. The decision to transfer Abdelshahed had caused an uproar in Sweden, with many politicians coming out to condemn the decision and demand an explanation from prison officials.
In response to the backlash, Vilhelm Grevik, the acting head of Sweden’s Prison and Probation Service, issued a press release on the case.
“The Swedish Prison and Probation Service handles thousands of placements every year, a few of which involve an inmate changing his legal gender. We follow the Prison Act, where the main rule for the Swedish Prison and Probation Service is that legal gender determines institutional placement and that people of the opposite sex should not be placed together,” Grevik wrote.
Additional details from the hearings have also been released, indicating that Abdelshahed attempted to use his gender identity as a mitigating mental health factor during the trial. Abdelshahed suggested that he had trialled life as a “woman” sometime in 2023, but had stopped and spiraled into a volatile depressive episode as a result.
“If I had been born Lily, I would be happy and have my children. Live my life as it is,” Abdelshahed reportedly told investigators.
Although Abdelshahed was sentenced to life imprisonment, the court also ordered his deportation. In Sweden, a life sentence (livstids fängelse) means imprisonment for an indefinite period with no fixed release date. After serving at least 10 years, however, a prisoner may apply to have a life sentence converted into a fixed-term sentence, which can allow for release after additional time is served.
In Abdelshahed’s case, the deportation order stipulates that if he is ever granted a fixed-term sentence and released upon the conclusion of the time served, he is to be expelled from Sweden and banned from returning.
According to Expressen, the court requested an assessment from the Swedish Migration Agency regarding Abdelshahed’s safety in Egypt as a trans-identified male should he be deported. In its response, the agency stated that while living as a transgender person in Egypt can be difficult due to prevailing social attitudes, the conditions were not considered severe enough to constitute a legal obstacle to the deportation order.
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