A decade ago in 2014, Lobna Yakout married Karim Salim, unaware of his history as a criminal. Now, four years after leaving him, Yakout is sharing how she learned that her ex-husband was a serial killer.
According to PEOPLE, after getting married, the couple moved to Cairo to raise their son. Although she felt like she found the love of her life, she had no idea she was in store for a much more dangerous lifestyle: Yakout allegedly endured years of abuse while living with Salim, alleging that, “He nearly killed me many times.”
After six years, Yakout had enough, and left Salim moving to a new home in Cairo, taking her 5-year-old son with her. But despite leaving him, Salim continued to harass and threaten her.
In 2021, a year after the couple separated, Yakout met with Salim in what was meant to be a meeting between father and son. Unfortunately, that was also the last time she was her child, as Salim kidnapped him, according to Arham Online.
After not hearing any news about her son and continuing to receive threats from her former lover, Yakout escaped to the United Kingdom. For the next two years, she didn’t hear from Salim until receiving a call in May from Egyptian authorities, telling her that he had been accused of murdering three women.
After an investigation, it was discovered that Salim murdered, tortured, and sexually assaulted the corpses of three female sex workers in his Cairo home between November 2023 and May 2024, recording every incident, per the report from Arham Online.
Now that Karim has been sentenced to death, Yakout is focusing on finding her son, who she still hasn’t seen since 2021.
In a TikTok video post last week, she shared, “Whenever he [Salim] got locked up, he told the police that I was dead, so his mom took my son… It’s been seven months, I haven’t seen my son, I haven’t heard from my son, she’s kidnapped him.”
She continued, “I filed all police papers…I have full custody, I have every single right. I cannot find this woman.”
Yakout has since started a GoFundMe in an effort to help find her missing son who is still somewhere unknown with Salim’s mother.