He's not crazy... so defendant will not go before jury

Hajrudin Hasanovic, 33, is accused of murdering his wife Cassandra Hasanovic, 24, as she was about to be driven to a women's refuge.

Serbian-born Hasanovic feared he would lose his children in a custody battle with his estranged wife, and was to be deported just a week after the attack on July 29 last year.

Consultant forensic psychiatrist Dr Duncan Anderson assessed Hasanovic two months after the attack and then again on Monday. Dr Anderson said he thought Hasanovic was fit to give evidence.

He said: 'He said he was okay talking to me and solicitors, but he felt if he went into court he would be overwhelmed and panic that he would not be able to think and respond to questions put to him.

'He would be likely to break down in tears and would be unable to stop and people would think he was crazy.'

Hasanovic drove to Bognor on the morning of July 29 and saw his mother-in-law's car parked in Normanton Avenue, around the corner from her home in Nyewood Lane.

Later that day he walked towards the car, dragged his wife out of the back seat and stabbed her with a nine-inch kitchen knife. He told Dr Anderson he '˜just snapped' and he could not remember anything other than stabbing his wife on the bottom.

'He told me '˜I don't know why I took the knife. I did not go to kill her. I did hate her',' he said.

He said he thought Hasanovic would have been suffering from severe depression at the time of the attack.

Hasanovic told Dr Anderson his children had failed to recognise him after they moved back to England from Australia. Hasanovic said '˜It ripped my heart out. After one year I am a stranger to them,' said Dr Anderson.

Hasanovic, of Prescott Close, Guston, near Dover denies murder but admits manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. The trial continues.