The father of Sara Sharif is desperately trying to get away with murder after admitting during “car crash” Old Bailey evidence that he beat to death his ten-year-old daughter, jurors have been told.
Urfan Sharif, 42, left a note by the side of Sara’s body admitting to murder and repeated the confession in a phone call to police when he and his family had fled to Pakistan.
Sharif spent six days in the witness box denying responsibility for a catalogue of appalling injuries sustained by Sara in a campaign of abuse in the final months and years of her life.
He then dramatically confessed to angry attacks on his child with a cricket bat, a metal pole, and an improvised truncheon, and suggested he wanted to plead guilty to murder.
But the guilty plea never happened, as Sharif consulted with his lawyers and then told jurors he had not intended to kill his daughter during the beatings.
“Despite everything, he wants to get away with it”, said prosecutor Bill Emlyn Jones KC, in his closing speech to the jury, branding Sharif’s defence case “ridiculous”.
“On the sixth day of evidence, Urfan Sharif came into the witness box and said he had something to say. He had spent six days on oath denying killing Sara, and all of a sudden that changed.
“He said I want to admit it, it was all my fault. I want the court to consider the note and my phone call as a confession.”
Mr Emlyn Jones argued Sharif had “recognised his lies weren’t going to work”, and he admitted severe beatings administering in punishment to Sara for vomiting or soiling herself.
“He accepted causing many and various fractures, and he admits he had done so through anger”, he said.
“He admitted he intended to hurt her, not just a little but intended to cause her really serious harm. In other words, he admitted murder.”
Sharif is on trial accused of murder alongside his wife Beinash Batool, 30, and brother Faisal Malik.
All three defendants are accused of violence towards Sara or at least knowledge and complicity in the abuse.
Sara was found dead at the family home in Woking, Surrey, on August 10 last year, two days after she had died. The family had already fled to Islamabad by the time emergency services were called.
The girl had suffered dozens of injuries over the course of several years, including multiple broken bones, bites, burns, and signs she was hooded and restrained, the Old Bailey has heard.
Sara had been kept out of school at times and made to wear a hijab in public, it is said, in alleged attempts to hide her injuries.
Mr Emlyn Jones suggested Sharif, in accepting “full responsibility” for the beatings but not pleading guilty, might be attempting to get away with murder while also protecting his wife and brother.
“Despite that full and emphatic confession to murder, he is still not prepared to admit murder”, he told jurors.
“He admitted murder to you, but then wriggled and backtracked in the desperate hope, somehow, he will get a lucky break from you.
“He is, to put it bluntly, taking you for fools.”
Turning to Batool and Malik, the prosecutor pointed out they had decided not to give evidence.
“They saw how it went for him (Sharif), it was a car crash”, he said.
“Why would they do it (give evidence) if they think he has done enough by saying ‘I take full responsibility’.”
Earlier in his evidence, Sharif had tried to blame Sara’s death on Batool, and suggested he was out working as a taxi driver when the injuries were inflicted.
However the prosecutor argued that Sharif had been behind a “culture of violent discipline where assaults on Sara had been completely normalised”.
He said the “truth has slowly emerged” during the trial, but it was “no thanks to the defendants”.
“Two of them have told you absolutely nothing. The other one has – one way or another – lied through his teeth”, he said.
“Poor Sara Sharif was brutally mistreated, abused, violently assaulted, over a long period of time. It had been going on for years.
“For the last eight months of her life, when the level of violence grew to the point where it ultimately cost her her life, there were three adults living in the house with her.
“It’s inconceivable that one of them alone, or two of them without the third, could have carried out what amounted to a campaign of abuse, without the complicity, participation, assistance, and encouragement of the others.”
Mr Emlyn Jones added: “None of them ever reported Sara’s abuse, suffering, or injuries to any outside agency which could have intervened.
“None of the injuries were reported to a doctor, or to staff at her school.
“They lived with Sara as she was being gradually beaten to death.”
Sharif, Batool, and Malik, formerly of Hammond Road, Woking, Surrey, deny murder and causing or allowing Sara’s death and the trial continues.
