Dubai: Wudeema, the eight-year-old girl tortured to death, ate her own excrement after she was starved in her father’s flat, a policeman told a court on Wednesday.
“The girl and her younger sister were left unfed in the flat. On the night that the girl died, she vomited a lot because she ate her own faeces. She and her sister used to eat leftover food and sometimes their own faeces,” the Emirati policeman told the Dubai Court of First Instance.
Their 29-year-old Emirati father, Hamad S., and his 27-year-old Emirati girlfriend [who claims to be his wife], Al Onoud A., have been charged with illegally confining the two daughters in a flat, torturing eight-year-old Wudeema to death and injuring seven-year-old Meera.
Meera sustained 10 per cent permanent disability.
Prosecutors are seeking capital punishment against the defendants.
“When I questioned Al Onoud, she claimed to me that she saw Wudeema vomiting heavily and very sick that evening. So she called Hamad and asked him to come to the flat. Al Onoud alleged to me that Wudeema was already dead when they woke up the next morning. She vomited because she ate her own excretion. The woman defendant also admitted that they heated the ironing machines and tortured the girls… she claimed that they tortured and beat Wudeema because she was disobedient,” the policeman testified before Presiding Judge Maher Salama Al Mahdi in courtroom three.
During Wednesday’s hearing, the court heard the statement of an Emirati police corporal who examined the crime scene [the flat].
“Hamad’s brother, the girls’ mother and Meera, reported the incident to Al Rashidiya police station. We examined the flat and found a hose, a metal bar, two ironing machines and an electric cable… those objects were used by the defendants to torture and beat the girls. The flat was unhygienic and in an unhealthy condition. . It had a very bad smell and the furniture was upside down. The girls’ clothes were also soaked with dirt,” the corporal told the court.
The court also heard the statement of Meera behind closed doors.
Presiding Judge Al Mahdi adjourned the case until November 25 to hear more prosecution witnesses.
