A shocking video has emerged of a distraught woman rushing her motionless 1-year-old daughter into the lobby of a five-star hotel in Kazakhstan after being beaten by her father, a British pilot, according to a report.
Madina, 23, begs for help from staff at the InterContinental Hotel in Almaty as she puts Sophia on the front desk counter on Oct. 24, 2019, East2West News reported.
The frenzied Kazakh woman collapses to the ground and is helped by a security officer who calls for an ambulance. She is then seen carrying the child to a sofa before falling back into fear, the heartbreaking video shows.
‘He killed my child! He hit her! Madina shouted, referring to her husband, Mohamed Barakat, 41, an Airbus A330 captain for a Hong Kong Airlines subsidiary, according to evidence from hotel employees.
The woman later retracted an earlier statement, saying, “I don’t believe my husband killed our daughter as there are no reasons and motives for it,” the outlet reported.
The father, who is on trial and has pleaded innocent, told the court that the girl died in an “accident” in the hotel room after suffering a “seizure” from epilepsy, the news report said.
Barakat said doctors in Hong Kong and Malaysia involved in his medical checkups knew he had long been suffering from epilepsy – although the condition is often a reason not to get a pilot’s license.
He told Judge Bakhytkhan Bakirbayev – who questioned him about Sophia’s “multiple consequences” – that he had suffered an epileptic seizure to which he had been susceptible since a car accident in London around 1996-97.
‘I’ve had a seizure. I don’t remember anything that happened to Sophia, ”he told the judge. “You ask me to give you information while I was having a seizure, but I can’t give you one.”
Barakat added that “there was absolutely no way I would ever hurt a hair on her head. Consciously or unconsciously, I would never hurt my own daughter. “
He also denied that he was drunkenly furious after a night out or had used “illegal substances” after evidence showed that he had used drugs between flights in Almaty.
Madina’s testimony suggested that her husband had a stockpile of cannabis in the hotel room before the tragedy – although investigators found no evidence of this – and that he had used cocaine.
The pilot also alleged that a senior investigator tried to bribe him and demanded $ 60,000 to “reclassify the case” – turning the murder charge into the death of the child in an accident, East2West reported.
In the new images shown in court, Barakat is also seen bringing Sophia into the hotel next to Madina the day before. The video ends with a medic rushing to the girl, who was pronounced dead shortly afterwards.
Receptionist Marzhan Ilyas recalled that the girl “always smiled” before her violent death.
Barakat, who previously worked as a pilot for the low-cost Malaysian airline AirAsia, could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted of murder.
Sources in Kazakhstan have denied his recent allegation in court that he went on a hunger strike.
His employer did not respond to a request for comment from East2West News.