Eight-year-old girl who died ‘after being tortured by her father, was forced to eat her own faeces when his mistress locked her in the toilet’
Eight-year-old girl who died ‘after being tortured by her father, was forced to eat her own faeces when his mistress locked her in the toilet’
- Father and mistress accused of torturing and imprisoning the girl and her sister
- Mistress admits to using hot irons to punish girls for being “disobedient.”
- Couple used metal rods and wires to systematically torture two daughters
- Police found stun guns and batons in the flat where the children had been left
An eight-year-old girl who died after being tortured with stun guns and hot irons was forced to eat her own feces after her father and his mistress left her to starve in a locked toilet, a Dubai court heard.
Wadeema al Sherawi had been deprived of food and was imprisoned as punishment for being ‘naughty’ the night she died – and in desperation ate her own garbage before throwing up.
Her father Hamad Saoud al Sherawi, 29, and his mistress Al Anood al Ameri, 27, have been charged with torturing and imprisoning Wadeema and her seven-year-old sister Mira, killing Wadeema and burying them illegally.
A Dubai court heard how a father and his mistress tortured and abused the man’s daughters and starved them to death
The Emirati couple allegedly beat the girls with electrical wires and metal bars, poured boiling water over them and burned them with hot irons and cigarettes.
A police officer told the Dubai Court of First Insstance that Wadeema and Mira – who survived the abuse but had permanent disabilities – were often deprived of food and sometimes ate their own excrement.
Emirati police officer Essam Obaid, 35, told the court: ‘The girl and her younger sister were left without food in the flat.
‘During the night [Wadeema] died, she vomited a lot because she ate her own feces.
“She and her sister ate moldy food and sometimes their own excrement.”
‘They left her in the toilet until 5am and when they went to check on her she was dead. She vomited because she ate her own feces.’
A second witness in the trial, police corporal Mubarak Ahmed Taleb, 34, said the studio apartment where the couple lived with the two girls was filthy and “not fit for people to live in.”
He told the court it smelled like stale urine: “It smelled really bad and was dirty. There was only one bed and the furniture was upside down. The girls’ clothes stank and there was rubbish everywhere.
The fridge was full of expired food. No one could live in it.’
He said when his investigative team searched the flat they found two irons with brown marks on them and said, “They had used them to burn the girls.”
He added that they had found some torture devices, including metal rods, sticks and stun guns.
Al Sherawi and Al Ameri, who just gave birth to a baby boy named Saoud while being held separately in captivity, stood in court as Judge Maher Salameh heard the case against them.
Al Ameri pressed her sleeping newborn baby to her chest, wrapped in a blue plaid blanket.
The pair were arrested after the girls’ uncle visited the flat in International City, Dubai and was informed of the abuse by Mira.
Al Sherawi and his mistress have been charged with torturing and imprisoning Wadeema and her seven-year-old sister, Mira, and killing and burying Wadeema.
He initially blamed both of them for Wadeema’s death, but later changed his story by saying that Al Sherawi was “a great father who loved his children.”
Al Sherawi has denied all charges, admitting only that he buried Wadeema in the desert, while his mistress has pleaded guilty to all charges.
Mr Obaid said today: ‘When I questioned Al Anood, she claimed that she saw Wadeema vomiting profusely and was very sick that evening, so she called Hamad and asked him to come to the flat.
“They left her in the toilet until 5am and when they went to check on her she was dead. She vomited because she ate her own feces.
Al Anood admitted to heating the irons and torturing the girls. She said Wadeema was tortured for not listening and disobedient.’
The judge said, “Couldn’t she have taught her children any other way?”
Obaid said Al Anood told him that they bathed and dressed Wadeema before burying her in the desert.
He said he had not interviewed Mira. The little girl gave evidence in court yesterday, but after Al Sherawi, who was clean-shaven for the first time in the trial, refused to proceed with the proceedings unless reporters were banned, the trial was heard in chambers.
Wadeema’s body was found in June but was so decomposed that forensic experts couldn’t say how she had died.
The girls’ natural mother, Salma Obaid, had to give them up in November 2011 after losing custody and had not seen them for six months when Wadeema died.
She married Al Sherawi in 2002 and divorced him in 2006. She previously told the court that she tried to convince him to let her see the girls, but was forbidden to contact them.
A forensic expert said Mira was lucky not to have died from her injuries. The case was adjourned until November 25.
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