Questions over mental state of baby murderer facing extradition

Ineta Dzinguviene: Fighting extradition over second child's death.

A mother who murdered her newborn son has returned to court to fight extradition over charges relating to another baby's death.

Ineta Dzinguviene was jailed for at least 15 years for suffocating the young child with cling film before hiding his body in a bag behind a roll of carpet in a stairwell in Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire.

The 26-year-old is now fighting extradition proceedings to Lithuania in connection with the death of a baby girl.

Sheriff Kenneth Maciver agreed to adjourn proceedings, at Edinburgh Sheriff Court on Monday, to obtain a report about Dzinguviene's mental state.

Defence lawyer Eilidh Yates told the court there were concerns about both her physical and mental condition. Dzinguviene will return to court in March.

The Lithuanian authorities want to put her on trial for the alleged murder of her daughter in April 2009.

She is charged with placing a plastic bag over the head of the baby, who was only weeks old, and murdering her.

According to reports in Lithuanian media, it is alleged that in 2009 she went to doctors in her home town of Vilkaviskis and was told she was 28 weeks pregnant.

The medical authorities "lost track" of Dzinguviene and later discovered she gave birth to a baby girl in the town of Marijampole, 13 miles away. Three days later, mother and baby left the hospital. It is alleged no one saw the baby again.

Grampian Police officers who investigated the Fraserburgh case said the mother, from Lithuania, showed no remorse for what had happened, while the judge branded it a "dreadful crime".

During an 11-day trial at the High Court in Livingston, jurors heard that Dzinguviene arrived in Scotland seven months pregnant in February 2010.

She hid her pregnant condition from friends in her Aberdeenshire home and called an ambulance only at the last minute after she went into labour.

She gave birth to Paulius Dzingus, weighing 6lbs 9oz, a "very healthy baby boy" at Fraserburgh hospital, on April 12.

The jury heard that Dzinguviene tried to leave hospital at once, clutching her blood and mucus-stained hospital sheet around her and heading for the door.

Both the neighbours and hospital staff noted she had no clothes, no pram or cuddly toys in the first floor flat on Fraserburgh High Street that she shared with her husband Arunas Dzingus and her other children aged nine, five and three.

The jury of eight women and seven men, took just over an hour to find Dzinguviene guilty.

They found her guilty, by majority verdict, of murdering Paulius - between two and four hours later according to pathologists by holding the plastic food wrap over his nose and mouth until he stopped breathing.

Passing sentence at the High Court in Glasgow last June, judge John Beckett QC told Dzinguviene she would serve at least 15 years for the "wicked" murder of a "defenceless and extremely vulnerable" child.

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