EGYPT: MUM SENTENCED TO DEATH FOR FEEDING DAUGHTER SULPHURIC ACID

July 1, 2020:

An Egyptian court has sentenced a housewife to death by hanging for killing her baby daughter by feeding her a caustic substance at a private medical clinic in Beheira Governorate, Egyptian media reported on 1st July 2020.
The crime starts with the discovery by the nursing staff and the doctor on duty at a clinic in the city of Rahmaniyah of the deteriorating health of a newborn and the presence of corrosive effects on her lips.
The director of the medical center’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) asked the nursing staff and the follow-up doctor who treated the girl and reviewed the surveillance cameras. The director discovered that the baby’s mother asked the nursing staff to breastfeed the infant, and then removed an injection that had a highly corrosive chemical (sulphuric acid) from the folds of her clothes, and fed the baby girl. The mother threw the syringe into the trash afterwards.
Sulphuric acid burned holes in the stomach of the baby girl who died.
After the victim’s father returned home as he was working abroad, he reported the murder to the prosecution, which ordered an autopsy and investigation into the crime.
The forensic report on the infant girl proved that the sulphuric acid burns were around her mouth and on her face, and that highly corrosive chemical caused the failure of breathing function, leading to her death.
The prosecution’s investigations confirmed that staff of the medical clinic in which the crime occurred were aware of the crime, and witnessed what happened through the surveillance cameras in the neonatal intensive care unit, but it was not reported, after the parents of the accused mother requested not to report the crime to the police on the pretext of not exposing and defaming the mother.
Investigations also revealed that the father of the accused mother was aware of the crime, but he also did not report it, so the prosecutor referred the mother to trial, on charges of deliberately killing the baby, and referred the accused father and the medical center staff to trial, on charges of participating in falsifying the admission and discharge papers of the victim, and hiding evidence for the investigation authorities.