A British airline captain killed his infant daughter by smashing her head against the walls and the doors of a five-star hotel suite. According to police reports, he was intoxicated when the murder happened.
Drunken range
Mohamed Barakat, a 41-year-old pilot of Airbus 330, allegedly beat his wife before he turned his anger on his infant daughter, Sofia, after a drinking session in Kazakhstan.
Barakat claims that the case against him was not true and it was made up by police in Almaty, who allegedly committed "gross violations" during the investigation. Barakat was detained after his wife, 22-year-old Madina Abdullayeva, ran into the lobby of the hotel screaming for help early in the morning.
The British pilot is accused of punching his wife repeatedly on the head before she escaped into the lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel, according to the indictment. The infant awoke because Barakat and Abdullayeva were fighting, he then turned his anger towards his 1-year-old daughter, according to the report of Astana TV.
According to police reports, Barakat picked up the baby from the cot, and he hit the baby on the doors and walls with her head.
When the baby no longer moved, he put her on the floor by the entrance of the room. According to forensic experts, the baby suffered from multiple injuries, her skull was fractured and her brain was crushed, she had no chance of survival.
The incident happened after the pilot returned to the hotel room intoxicated. He reportedly drank until 7 am. His wife then called his airline to report that he was not feeling well, with the intention of letting her husband get some sleep.
The wife's call to Hong Kong Airlines angered him, and that was when they began to fight, with him ending up hitting her multiple times before she ran out of the room, as reported by Mirror UK.
Barakat's family
The pilot's family in England claims that he has faced injustice in Kazakhstan. His lawyers went as far as to say that the whole thing was fabricated. They added that there is no evidence in the criminal case to provide his guilt for the death of his child.
Attorney Tair Nazkhanov said that the forensic examination reports showed that there were no fingerprints and DNA from Mohamed on the infant's body, which means that he did not the child that day. He added that the blood sample that they got from the hotel did not belong to the child.
The lawyers of Barakat are demanding that the case is sent back to the state prosecutor for examination. They claimed that the police did not accept any other explanation about the incident, as reported by The DailyMail.
According to the evidence in the case, the death of the child was from bilateral compression of the skull. His wife is in contact with him but was banned from seeing him. There are no visits allowed to inmates due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The pilot has been in police custody since October 2019. According to the lawyers, Barakat's wife has been in contact with him but she has no desire to bail him out. The case is being examined further but there is no new development.
