An English woman, Sara Ege, 33, was sentenced to seventeen years in jail in England for beating to death her son and then burning his body to hide her crime. Ege committed the heinous crime after seven-year-old Yaseen failed to memorize the Koran by heart. The defense nevertheless described her as a “brilliant mother.”
In England, sentences are generally lower, including the true meaning of a life sentence.
Ege would beat the boy with a stick for not learning the word of God fast enough. He suffered serious injuries and died in July 2010 from three months of such moral teachings. His mother then burned his body with her family home to hide her crime. It didn’t work.
Nevertheless, the judge accepted the defense insistence that the India-born Ege was “a devoted and loving mother.” She also accepted that she was herself a victim of domestic violence at the hands of her husband Yousef Ege, 38. Ege ultimately accused her husband of being the real killer. However, the court found the father was not guilty even of the lesser offense of failing to stop the beatings.
Even with the character evidence supporting Ege, it is hard to see how this sentence is sufficient for beating a child to death over a long period of time and then burning a house to destroy evidence. What do you think?
Source: SKY
Frankly, Tony S et al.
Thanks lots. Both for anti-islamicphobist (exorcism) comments.
And for facts which still requiré muliing through. Rarel stuff.
One of my favo authors who was famous in going anywhere to find about nomadism ” Bruce Chatwin. for ex. “Songlines” or “Gone to Patagonia” from his famed telegram he sent his bosses at Sotheby, where he had been an appraiser sent to meet customers wishing to sell things being only seventeen years.
He wrote of a blind boy who could recite the Koran at 14 years in a desert tent.
Sha may have known it by heart, but knew nothing for that.
17 years may not seem like much, but this is time spent not having kids and beating them to death. And she’ll be 50 when she gets out. Maybe she won’t have any more kids at that age. I’m good with that.
She’ll get out of prison when she’s 50 and will have nothing. If she even survives prison.
The US is an outlier in that it has very long prison sentences compared to other countries.
Wow. A disturbing story. I hope the English parole authorities keep her locked up for longer than 17 years.
Tony – THANKS! That was very interesting to read and explains a lot. I learned something good to know today appreciate it!
As I recall the man who recently ambushed and killed the firefighters had served a 17 year sentence for killing someone with a hammer.
This is, of course, outrageous, horrible, and injust. Not only is the sentence ridiculous, but the fact that the father got off scot free–and for all we know, he was abusing his wife and teaching her that abuse is the way to get others to do what you want.
Anyone who has even a rudimentary knowledge of child development realizes that a 7-year-old is incapable of committing the entirety of a book as large as the Koran to memory, no matter how willing he might be or how hard he might work at it–unless he’s a savant, who might be able to quote you chapter and verse from it after hearing it read to him once, or play you a Beethoven sonata on the piano after hearing it only once, but be unable to feed or dress himself in the morning. Most adults could not do it.
It’s easy to castigate this mother as a religous fanatic, but really, the situation would have been just as outrageous had she been a stickler for English and expected her son to memorize the Oxford English Dictionary. Her expectations of his abilities were completely inappropriate in about a million ways, and the sentence for what she did to him is ridiculous. And, once again, the possible role of the father in this being brushed aside…there are no words.
I’m leery of commenting on the length of sentencing in other countries, when the sentencing in our own country is a haphazard thing bouncing between draconian and ridiculous. Tony S’ clarification rings true and the sentence does not seem off kilter with his perspective. The question is what are we trying to accomplish via sentencing? Is it constructive punishment, revenge or rehabilitation? I think that identifying the true criminal behind a crime is also haphazard, though in this case the guilty may be obvious and because of the “luck of the draw” convictions the sentencing is a lesser part of the problem.
As far as this woman’s behavior goes the big problem that has existed forever with a Fundamentalist (I assume) religious view, is that it gives license to all manner of evil excess in the name of a God.
She could have learned from her “American Cousins”. The United States military could teach her how to discipline the little brat. Take away his clothes, bedsheets, blanky, and turn down the temperature in his 8 x 8 ft cell and then wake him up each hour during the night. We call it the Manning Method. Bradley Manning? You have heard of him have you not AmeriKa?
Speaking of lenient, Tony, I take your point. But it’s hard to make sense out of US sentences, much less prosecutions, where a whole class of robber bankers, instead of getting prosecuted, get bailed out and revered as important economic advisors to the government. But, you know, give a cop the slightest reason to be upset and you’ll wind up in the clink posthaste, and lucky if it’s not with a broken nose or limb. You really can’t compare. Perhaps some Soviet era eastern European state would be a better comparison.
Evidently she had never read it.
I believe 17 years is on the high end of a tariff for a life sentence. At the end of the tariff lifers are not automatically freed, but their case is reviewed by the Parole Board. This lifer is unlikely to pose a threat to the public in 17 years time so she will probably be freed on licence at that time.
Licence generally involves reporting to probation officer regularly, and reporting all changes of address. A lifer out on licence can be ordered back into prison at any time, without trial, if suspected of relatively trivial sentences. A walk in the park this is not.
It doesn’t seem inappropriate to me. If this is “lenient” compared to US sentences, that says a lot more about US sentences than about the UK.
After her sentence, they should drop her back in India. That would a fitting bit of extra punishment.
Yes, push her out the door of the plane as it flies over India….
Was this Mother mentally well? Is there a classification in the mentally ill handbook for parents that kill their children.
These parents wanted a trained dog.
Ain’t Religion wunnerful …
“Without Religion we’d not have morality.”
Spare the rod, spoil the child…. Knows no bounds of human decency….. Sorta like executions here….
A wonderful mother does not beat her child to death. The whole idea that she felt beating a 7 year old when he did not learn anything quickly enough was appropriate is so absurd and brutal. the addition of the religious demnsion makes the whole episode more disturbing. Did she think the beatings were ok because it was the Koran and that she had a religious duty to punish him? Or, did she raise the religion card to get a crazy judge to give her a pass because its her religion?
17 years is not enough.
17 years in prison for murdering her son and then burning the body??? Unacceptable punishment. She should be burned at the stake, while still breathing!
I know this was in England, but I think it is high time we started letting citizens bring suit against attorneys for “contempt of court,” or perhaps “contempt of reality, intelligence, and common decency.”
I think religious insanity knows no bounds. How was the father not culpable? They should both live out their miserable lives in a pain amplifier. And, since I am in before the “those-damn-mooslimbs” patrol I’ll just point out that we get regular reports of death by ‘exorcism’ here in the US as gawd-fearin’ Christians torture people to death under the belief that they are possessed by demons and need to be ‘saved’.
The label for the illness may change but the taxonomy may indicate a difference but the pathology is the same