Manama: A court in Kuwait has sentenced a Kuwaiti mother and her boyfriend to death after they were found guilty of killing her special-needs daughter to get rid of her.
According to the case documents, the interior ministry’s operations room received a call from a woman reporting the death of her young girl after she fell from a height in their home in Mubarak Al Kabeer governorate.
However, when paramedics and policemen arrived at the site and saw the body, they noticed bruises.
They refused to transport the victim and called forensic experts who found bruises on the face, neck and chest and burns on the left arm.
They told the officers that the woman should be held pending further probes into the causes of the death.
Investigators questioned the mother, a divorcee who was 26 years old at the time of the crime, and she initially said that she was taking a walk with her boyfriend, 24 then, and that he had beaten her daughter up.
However, the boyfriend who was arrested later told the public prosecution that her mother was involved with him in the beating and she wanted to kill and get rid of her.
The investigators also learnt that the girl had frequently been beaten by the woman’s boyfriend.
Kuwait courts are very strict about murders and often rule the capital punishment for culprits. Capital cases are automatically reviewed by the Court of Appeal, and if upheld, are referred to the Court of Cassation, the country’s highest court. If they are again upheld, they are sent to the Emir for approval.
In January last year, two Kuwaitis, including one member of the ruling family, two Egyptians, two Ethiopians and one Filipino were executed for murder and a Bangladeshi for abduction and rapes.
The northern Arabian Gulf state reportedly carried out 80 executions (74 men and six women) between April 1964 and January 2017.
