Kuwait’s Court of Appeals has overturned the death sentence for a father and mother who tortured their four-year-old daughter to death and kept her body in a freezer.
The court in its new ruling sentenced the father to 10 years in jail and acquitted the mother.
Investigation revealed that the 26-year-old father in May last year beat his daughter Isra with an electrical wire and poured hot water on her in front of her 23-year-old mother and three younger siblings.
Security sources said that police received a tip about a suspicious murder in a flat in the Salmiya area of Kuwait City.
Upon searching the flat, investigators found a bag in the freezer containing the frozen body of a young girl, the sources added
Forensic doctors reported that the body had burns on the shoulders and feet and traces of torture.
During his interrogation, the girl's father, reportedly a drug addict, said that his daughter had accidentally swallowed one of his pills and died.
However, he later admitted that he had tortured her by pouring hot water over her and beating her up with an electrical wire for her alleged negligence. He added that he later relented when he saw her condition and bought her medicines, but she had already died.
The man said that he then went and bought a freezer and placed Isra's body inside it.
Meanwhile, the girl's mother refused to stay in the flat where the body was hidden so the man was forced to take her and their three children to another location.
However, they complained that they could not stay there as the place was unbearably hot, so he then took them to his mother's flat and asked her to accommodate them for a few days, the sources said.
The man told his mother that Isra had been hospitalised and that he would be staying with her at the hospital.
Upon hearing the details, investigators headed to the flat where they arrested Isra's mother for her complicity in the murder of her daughter.
Further investigation revealed that both parents consumed drugs and that the father had been fired from work for showing up to work in an inebriated state.
It was also found that the couple were extremely negligent in the upbringing of their children and that their flat was disorganised and dirty.
In its statement, the interior ministry said the parents were under the influence of drugs at the time of the murder.