The BBC reports a horrible case of child abuse ending with a seven-year-old boy beaten to death with a piece of wood.
His mother, Sara Ege, 33, denies beating Yaseen Ali Ege to death at their home in Pontcanna, Cardiff, in July 2010 and setting fire to his body…The jury was shown a piece of wood which the prosecution claims was used by Mrs Ege to hit her son “like a dog”.
Mrs Ege covered her ears as jurors heard the 999 call she made saying that there was a fire in the home and that her son was still upstairs…It was first thought that the boy had died in the fire and that his death was a tragic accident, the jury heard.
But a post mortem examination revealed he had died several hours before the blaze, of multiple injuries caused by being hit by a blunt instrument.
Sare Ege admitted she been hitting Yassen with a stick, in her own words, “like a dog,” for three months before the fire, the court heard…Mrs Ege admitted pouring lighter fuel over her son’s body, the jury was told, saying “I know he was gone but I was just trying to protect myself”.
Oh, well then.
How horrendous. Three months of being beaten with a stick…and in the end being killed that way. By his own mother.
But the BBC report never says why. Did he disobey? Wet the bed? Talk back?
To find out why, you have to read the Telegraph.
In a video recording of her interview with police, Mrs Ege told them: “I was trying to teach him the Koran.
“I was getting more and more frustrated. If he didn’t read it properly I would be very angry — I would hit him.
“We had a high target. I wanted him to learn 35 pages in three months.
“I promised him a new bike if he could do it. But Yaseen wasn’t very good — after a year of practice he had only learnt a chapter.”
The court heard Mrs Ege, 32, a university graduate, and her husband, Yousuf, had enrolled Yaseen in advanced classes at their local mosque.
They wanted him to become a hafiz — an Islamic term for someone who memorises the Koran.
I think it’s appalling that the BBC kept that a secret. It must have been trying to be “sensitive” toward its Muslim readers, but think about it – what about the children of its Muslim readers? Why not be sensitive toward them too? Why not tell the truth of this hideous event by way of warning other parents?