Eight-year-old girl who died ‘after being tortured by her father and forced to eat her own feces when her lover locked her in the toilet’
- Father and mistress are accused of torturing and imprisoning the girl and her sister
- Mistress admits using hot irons to punish girls for ‘disobedience’
- The couple used metal bars and wires to systematically torture two daughters
- Police found stun guns and batons in the home where the children were abandoned
An eight-year-old girl who died after being tortured with electric batons and hot irons was forced to eat her own feces after her father and lover left her in a locked toilet to starve, a Dubai court heard.
Wadeema al Sherawi was starved and imprisoned as punishment for being “naughty” the night she died – and in desperation she ate her own excrement before throwing up.
Her father Hamad Saoud al Sherawi, 29, and his lover Al Anood al Ameri, 27, have been accused of torturing and imprisoning Wadeema and her seven-year-old sister Mira, killing Wadeema and burying him illegally.
A court in Dubai heard how a father and his mistress tortured, abused and starved the man’s daughters
The Emirati couple are said to have beaten the girls with electric wires and metal rods, poured boiling water over 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 with a permanent disability – were often not fed and sometimes ate their own feces.
Emirati Police Officer Essam Obaid, 35, told the court: “The girl and her younger sister were left in the apartment without food.
‘At night [Wadeema] died, she vomited a lot because she ate her own feces.
“She and her sister used to eat moldy food and sometimes their own poop.”
‘They left her in the bathroom until 5 a.m. and when they checked on her, she was dead. She was throwing up from eating her own excrement.”
A second witness at the trial, Police Corporal Mubarak Ahmed Taleb, 34, said the one-bedroom apartment where the couple lived with the two girls was filthy and “not suitable for people”.
He told the court it stank of stale urine: “It smelled really bad and was dirty. There was only one bed and the furniture was turned upside down. The girls’ clothes stank and there was a mess everywhere.
“The fridge was full of out-of-date groceries. Nobody could live in it.”
He said when his investigative team searched the apartment, they found two brown-stained irons and said, “They had used them to burn the girls.”
He added that they found some of the torture instruments, including metal bars, sticks and electric batons.
Al Sherawi and Al Ameri, who have just given birth to a boy named Saoud while held separately in captivity, stood trial while Judge Maher Salameh heard the case against them.
Al Ameri hugged her sleeping newborn 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 was informed of the abuse by Mira.
Al Sherawi and his mistress were accused of torturing and imprisoning Wadeema and her seven-year-old sister Mira, as well as killing and burying Wadeema
He initially blamed both of them for Wadeema’s death, but later changed his story, saying Al Sherawi was “a great father who loved his children.”
Al Sherawi has denied all allegations and only admits to burying Wadeema in the desert while his lover has pleaded guilty to all allegations.
Mr Obaid said today: “When I questioned Al Anood, she claimed she saw Wadeema throwing up profusely that evening and was very ill, so she called Hamad and asked him to come to the flat.
“They left her in the toilet until 5am and when they checked on her, she was dead. She was vomiting from eating her own excrement.
‘Al Anood admitted heating the irons and torturing the girls. She said Wadeema was tortured for not listening and disobeying.’
The judge said, “Wasn’t there any other way she could teach her kids?”
Mr Obaid said Al Anood told him they washed and dressed Wadeema before burying her in the desert.
He said he didn’t interview Mira. The little girl testified in court yesterday, but after Al Sherawi, who was clean-shaven for the first time in the trial, refused to continue the proceedings unless reporters were banned, the trial was heard in court.
Wadeema’s body was found in June, but was so badly decomposed that coroners couldn’t say how she died.
The girls’ biological mother, Salma Obaid, had to give her up in November 2011 after losing custody and had not seen her for six months when Wadeema died.
She married Al Sherawi in 2002 and divorced him in 2006. She previously told the court she tried to persuade him to let her see the girls but was banned from contact with them.
A forensic scientist said Mira was lucky not to die from her injuries. The case was adjourned until November 25.
