> Suleiman Hassan, a 12-year-old Palestinian from the West Bank, suffered what is known as an internal decapitation, with his skull detached from the top vertebrae of his spine — officially known as a bilateral atlanto occipital joint dislocation, according to The Times of Israel.

My guess is, the nerves and blood vessels were still connected but nothing was holding them in place.

Also, it looks like about 1/3 of people survive these [1, 2, 3]. So this isn’t a “first known success”, but still pretty impressive [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S15299.... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanto-occipital_dislocatio... Talk,cases result in immediate death. [3] https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/what-is-internal-decapitati...