“An almost inconceivable degree of cruelty” : the father and stepmother of Sara Sharif, an Anglo-Pakistani girl beaten to death in August 2023 near London after years of abuse, were sentenced Tuesday to life in prison.
This trial shocked the United Kingdom, both because of the violence inflicted on the 10-year-old child and because of the missed opportunities that could have saved her. “It is no exaggeration to describe it as torture”said the judge at the Old Bailey court in London. For more than an hour, he explained his decision, detailing the actions “despicable” endured by the little girl.
His father, Urfan Sharif, 43, cannot be released until he has served 40 years in prison. Her mother-in-law Beinash Batool, 30, will have to remain in detention for at least 33 years. His uncle Faisal Malik, 29, who had lived with the couple in Woking (south-west London) for eight months, was found guilty of “caused or made possible his death”. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison.
Unusually, the verdict was broadcast live on television. The judge sentenced the “almost inconceivable degree of cruelty” of the accused, who have not “not shown true remorse”.
Sara was treated “as if she was worthless”. More than the other children in the house, she suffered this violence “because she was a girl”born from another mother. She must have been “in a permanent state of terror”.
The autopsy of the little girl who died on August 8, 2023 revealed around a hundred internal and external injuries including head trauma, multiple fractures, bruises and scars, burn marks, including one with an iron, and human bite marks.
The family on the run
The morning after Sara’s death, her father, stepmother and uncle flew to Pakistan with the five other children, leaving the little girl’s body on a bed. During the trial, Urfan Sharif, a taxi driver, first accused his wife, then admitted responsibility, while claiming that he did not want to kill Sara.
It was he who had informed the English police, explaining by telephone, once he had arrived in Pakistan, that he had wanted “legally punish” her daughter but had her “too beaten”. After a month on the run, the trio returned to the UK and were arrested on the plane. The five children are still in Pakistan.
Sara’s teacher told the trial of a little girl who arrived in class wearing a hijab in January 2023, the only one in her family to wear one, and who pulled on it to hide marks. Noticing traces of blows, the school issued three reports, without result.
By April 2023, the family had moved and Urfan Sharif announced to the school that Sara would now be homeschooled.
“It is clear that we must act”
At the trial, he admitted to having strangled his daughter several times with his bare hands – to the point of breaking a bone in her neck -, to having hit her with a cricket bat while she was tied up, or even a high chair leg. .
Social services knew Urfan Sharif and Olga, Sara’s Polish mother whom he had met online, even before the little girl was born. Sara and her older brother had been placed in a foster home several times, then returned to their mother once separated from Sharif, before a judge decided to entrust Sara and her brother to their father in 2019, despite his violent nature.
Sara, buried in Poland, is “now an angel who watches us from heaven”wrote his mother in a letter read by the prosecutor before the verdict. The death of Sara Sharif and then the trial traumatized the British and made headlines.
“The State has failed too many children in recent years, it is clear that we must act”said Education Minister Bridget Phillipson on Tuesday morning on the BBC.
The government is due to present a bill on Tuesday to better protect vulnerable children. The text notably imposes restrictions on home schooling for children whose family environment is considered unsuitable or dangerous.
