An eight-year-old girl who died “after being tortured by her father was forced to eat her own feces when her lover locked her in the bathroom”
- Father and lover accused of torturing and imprisoning girl and sister
- Amante admits using hot irons to punish girls for being ‘disobedient’
- Couple used metal bars and wires to systematically torture two daughters
- Police found stun guns and sticks on the floor where the children were abandoned.
An eight-year-old girl who died after being tortured with stun guns and hot irons was forced to eat her own faeces after her father and his lover left her to starve in a closed bathroom, a Dubai court heard.
Wadeema al Sherawi had been starved and locked up as punishment for being “naughty” on the night of her death and, in desperation, ate her own excrement before vomiting.
Her father Hamad Saoud al Sherawi, 29, and her lover Al Anood al Ameri, 27, have been accused of torturing and imprisoning Wadeema and her sister Mira, seven, of killing Wadeema and illegally burying her. .
A Dubai court heard how a father and his lover tortured and abused the man’s daughters and left them to starve.
The Emirati couple are said to have beaten the girls with electric cables and metal bars, poured boiling water on them and burned them with hot irons and cigarettes.
A police officer told the Dubai Court of First Instance that Wadeema and Mira, who survived the abuse but were left permanently disabled, often went without food and sometimes ate their own faeces.
Emirati police officer Essam Obaid, 35, told the court: ‘The girl and her younger sister were left unfed in the apartment.
‘The night he (Wadeema) died, he vomited a lot because he ate his own faeces.
“She and her sister ate moldy food and sometimes their own feces.”
‘They left her in the bathroom until five in the morning and when they went to see her she was dead. ‘She vomited because she ate her own excrement.’
A second witness at the trial, police corporal Mubarak Ahmed Taleb, 34, said the studio where the couple lived with the two girls was dirty and “not suitable for humans to live in.”
He told the court he stank of stale urine: “It smelled very bad and was dirty.” There was only one bed and the furniture was upside down. The girls’ clothes stank and there was mess everywhere.
‘The fridge was full of expired food. No one could live in it.’
He said when his investigation team searched the apartment, they found two irons with brown marks and said: “They had been used to burn the girls.”
He added that they found some of the torture instruments, including metal bars, sticks and stun guns.
Al Sherawi and Al Ameri, who just had a baby named Saoud while separated in captivity, appeared in court as Judge Maher Salameh heard the case against them.
Al Ameri hugged her sleeping newborn baby to her chest wrapped in a blue plaid blanket.
The couple were arrested after the girls’ uncle visited the apartment in International City, Dubai, and Mira reported the abuse to him.
Al Sherawi and his lover have been accused of torturing and imprisoning Wadeema and her seven-year-old sister Mira, and of killing and burying Wadeema.
He initially blamed them both for Wadeema’s death, but later changed his story and said that Al Sherawi was “a great father who loved his children.”
Al Sherawi has denied all charges and only admits to burying Wadeema in the desert, while his lover has pleaded guilty to all accusations.
Mr Obaid said today: “When I questioned Al Anood, she claimed that she saw Wadeema vomiting a lot and that he was very sick that night, so she called Hamad and asked him to come to the flat.
‘They left her until 5 in the morning in the bathroom and when they went to see her, she was dead. She vomited because she ate her own excrement.
‘Al Anood admitted to heating the irons and torturing the girls. He said Wadeema was tortured because she did not listen and was disobedient.’
The judge said, ‘Was there no other way to teach your children?’
Obaid said Al Anood told him that Wadeema had been washed and dressed before burying her in the desert.
He said he hadn’t interviewed Mira. The girl gave evidence in court yesterday, but after Al Sherawi, who was clean shaven for the first time in the trial, refused to continue with the proceedings unless journalists were banned, the trial took place in courtrooms .
Wadeema’s body was found in June, but it was so decomposed that forensic experts could not say how he 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 allow her to see the girls, but was banned from contact with them.
A forensic expert said Mira had been lucky not to die from her injuries. The case was adjourned until November 25.