Sara Sharif: Judge’s voice trembles as he jails sadistic killers for life over 10-year-old’s death

WARNING: GRAPHIC DETAILS

Sara Sharif ’s “sadistic” father and stepmother were jailed for life on Tuesday as a judge said their crimes in torturing the ten-year- old to death were among the worst any jury had heard.

Shouts of “evil” and cheering erupted from the Old Bailey public gallery as the pitiless killers were led back to the cells.

Urfan Sharif was ordered to serve a minimum of 40 years, his wife Beinash Batool received 33 years and his brother Faisal Malik got 16 years for causing or allowing Sara’s death.

In an extraordinary sentencing, the judge’s voice trembled at times while expressing the ordeal that “beautiful” and “courageous” Sara suffered at the hands of the sickeningly cruel couple, who beat her to death last August before fleeing to Pakistan.

Mr Justice Cavanagh described the “unimaginable pain, misery and anxiety” Sara must have suffered in the two bedroom home in Woking, Surrey, as she was tied up and hooded in a plastic bag and beaten, burnt with an iron, bitten and strangled until her neck broke.

Describing the abuse as “nothing short of gruesome”, the High Court judge said: “Sara’s death was the culmination of years of neglect, frequent assaults, and what can only be described as the torture of this small child, mainly, but not entirely, at the hands of her father, Urfan.

“The degree of cruelty involved is almost inconceivable. This happened in plain sight, in front of the rest of the family.

“The courts at the Old Bailey have been witness to many accounts of awful crimes, but few can have been more terrible than the despicable treatment of this poor child that the jury in this case have had to endure.”

In an emotionally charged hearing, many in court wept as Sara’s mother Olga Domin described her daughter as an “angel” who had been the victim of sadistic “executioners” after a family court decided to remove Sara from her care and place her in Sharif’s custody in 2019.

Ms Domin, who attended court from Poland by video link, provided a moving victim impact statement, saying: “She is now an angel who looks down on us from heaven, she is no longer experiencing violence.

“To this day, I can’t understand how someone can be such a sadist to a child.”

Addressing the defendants in the dock, she said: “You are sadists although even this word is not enough for you. I would say you are executioners.”

After the hearing, she told The Sun that there was finally “some justice” for Sara, adding: “If anything has come from Sara’s death is he (Sharif) is off the street and it will be a safer place for women without him.”

The judge said there were “questions about whether more could have been done to prevent the tragic consequences in this case” after it emerged during the two-month trial that Sharif, 42, had spent 16 years torturing women and children.

Despite being repeatedly accused of attacking partners and children, Sharif managed to hoodwink police, teachers and social services, who recommended he be granted custody of Sara.

Mr Justice Cavanagh said the “campaign of torture” started just days after that fateful family court hearing in 2019, continuing until Sara’s murder on August 8 last year when Sharif beat her to death.

She had suffered 71 “fresh injuries” and “29 fractures”.

A day later Sharif dumped his daughter’s broken body under the pink covers of her bunk bed and fled to his native Pakistan with his wife and brother.

Only when he had landed in the country – which has no extradition treaty with Britain – did Sharif call 999 to say: “It wasn’t my intention to kill her, but I beat her up too much”.

The judge said the trio might have cheated justice but for Sharif’s family, who forced them to return to the UK due to the “heat” that Pakistani police placed on relatives shielding them.

In the televised sentencing, Mr Justice Cavanagh said Sharif’s ego was boosted by the “power he wielded” over a “brave, feisty and spirited child” who tried to carry on singing and dancing even after she had been held down and burnt with an iron on her buttocks days before her death.

He said Sara’s letters found after her death – including one begging her father and stepmother for mercy, saying “please forgive me, I am so sorry” – had been “the most heartbreaking pieces of evidence”.

The defendants remained stony-faced throughout the sentencing hearing, with Sharif shaking his head in the dock as the judge said he had derived “grim satisfaction” from the beatings.

When Sharif made a show of wiping his eyes, the judge told him “you are suffused with self pity”.

He told Batool, 30, she had treated Sara as if she was “worthless”.

And he called suggestions that Malik, 29, did not have “full knowledge” of the violence in the home he shared with the family as “preposterous”.

The judge said none of the defendants had “shown a shred of remorse”.

Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza called for “bold reform”, saying: “Sara’s death acts as a stark reminder of the profound weaknesses in our child protection system.”