Latest / Crime Night / Seven Months Tied to a Chair: The Chilling Timeline of Aya's Abandonment and Execution

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Seven Months Tied to a Chair: The Chilling Timeline of Aya's Abandonment and Execution · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Imagine the air in that small apartment, man shi At Nasser,
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: utterly chilling. You could, you know, cut the tension with
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: a knife, and then the silence just shatters. It's adds
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: the stepmother screaming pure panic, calling for neighbors come quick.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Ooh.
• 0:12
  Speaker 3: They run in and there it is awful scene.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Aya, she's nineteen, just laid out on the floor, really unnatural,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: and her skin it's already turning this dark, alarming blue color.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: But maybe the most disturbing part her father Yid arrives
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: and his reaction.
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: I mean it's just ice.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Cold, total detachment, indifference. Really, It immediately tells you this
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: wasn't some sudden accident. This felt well planned, calculated.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Right, that detachment you mentioned, that's absolutely crucial. Here's the
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: thread we need to pull because the death itself, horrific
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: as it is, it's really just the final act in
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: a long, long story, a story of well constant abandonment,
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: escalating brutality. The records actually call them ead as an
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: even a mirror the biological mother of the three devils.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: That gives you some idea. So what we're doing here today,
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: our mission, if you like, is to trace Aya's whole life,
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: all nineteen years. We need to map about this timeline
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: of cruelty, how the very people meant to protect her
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: failed her again and again, how every single safety net
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: just collapsed, and how that led directly to this shocking,
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: senseless end.
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: Okay, let's unpack this, starting right at the very beginning,
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: her birth, the family, what there was of it. So
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: I was born in nineteen ninety five, Cairo. Her father, Eid,
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: he's an ironer, seems like steady work, you know. Her mother, Emira,
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: the record's a blunt, just a housewife who knew nothing
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: about home, not exactly stable ground. And it wasn't just
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: two years constant fighting, then divorce.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: And bum right there the first abandonment, and it's a
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: profound one. Amira, her own mother. She decides the best
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: way to get back at Eid, her ex husband, is
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: through their daughter. She just cuts ties completely, says she's done, vanishes,
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: never looks back, never asks about Aya again, just gone
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: from her life.
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: Wow, so I is too one parent just walks away.
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: What does Ed do? He's got a job right in ironer,
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: but he says he's not free, doesn't have time, so
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: instead of figure it out, he takes the easy route,
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: sends her away, ships two year old Aya off to
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: the countryside to his mother, her grandmother.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: Mm hm. And this is where the pattern really gets set,
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: the denial of a future. She stays with the grandmother
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: for ten years, ten crucial years, and all that time,
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: zero education, absolutely none, not allowed in school, wasn't taught
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: anything academic. Her whole life was just learning to clean, cook,
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: do chores like training.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: But for what exactly. It wasn't for her own future,
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: was it.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: No, not in the way we'd think. The sources are
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: really clear on this. In their family, their circle, the
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: only path they saw for girls was marriage. That's it.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: So that the grandmother was quite explicitly just prepping her
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  Speaker 2: to be a wife, a domestic servant basically. And ID
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: during that whole decade, yeah, he barely visited. You could
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: count the times on one hand, just utter.
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: Neglect, right until two thousand and seven. I is twelve now, Yeah,
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: and the grandmother decides she's done too, says she's too old.
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: She demands ID take Aya back. And the chilling part
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: is the records. You know, the grandmother knew his nature,
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: she knew what d was like. So this wasn't just
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: passing her on. It felt like pushing her towards danger,
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: didn't it.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: It really did, a knowing abandonment. So Iya comes back
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: to Cairo twelve years old, and he's not alone anymore.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: He's remarried to wasa a relative apparently, and the record
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: say she shared his let's say, harsh temperament for them.
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  Speaker 2: Iowa wasn't a daughter coming home. She was a ready
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: made servant. Her lack of schooling perfect. It didn't matter
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: what matter was could she clean? Could she cook?
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  Speaker 3: So the shift was immediate, brutal. Not welcome home, but
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: get to work. She had to do everything literally earn
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: the bite. She ate, as the saying goes in her
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  Speaker 3: own father's house. Basically an unpaid living maid who got
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: punished constantly.
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  Speaker 2: And punished brutally for anything, any sign of being tired,
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  Speaker 2: wanting to play for a minute like any kid would,
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: even just resting. The descriptions are stark, overwhelming, limitless beating, torture,
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: humiliation from both of them, Id and Eessa. And this
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: wasn't a one off. This was her reality for seven years,
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: from age twelve to seventeen.
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  Speaker 3: Seven years. It's almost unbearable to think about living under
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  Speaker 3: that kind of constant threat. She called it a sick environment.
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: How does she finally decide to break free?
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: Well, around seventeenth something must have just snapped. She decided anything,
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: even being homeless, even having nothing, was better than staying
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: So she ran. Think about that, nowhere to go, no money,
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: no education, right, but she still ran. That tells you
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: how bad it was.
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: And Yid's reaction when he found out she'd gone. He
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: went looking. But it wasn't about concern for her.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: Was it, Oh, not at all. He searched like mad, Yes,
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: but it was all about his image, his reputation in
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  Speaker 2: the neighborhood. A runaway daughter that looked bad made him
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: look like he couldn't control his family. That was the
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: real worry, social standing.
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: And she was found, wasn't she by relatives back in
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: the countryside, near where her grandmother lived. They heard her story,
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  Speaker 3: they knew what was happening. But what did they do?
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  Speaker 2: Send her straight back? So they couldn't stand her presence,
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  Speaker 2: just couldn't be bothered, chose their own comfort over protecting her.
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  Speaker 3: Unbelievable. Another door slammed shut, and that failure that return
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: make things worse, didn't.
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  Speaker 2: It at astrophically worse. After that, the cruelty just ramped
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: up massively. And that's when I started telling people she knew.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: She said flat out, I'm going to die here. My
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: father and stepmother will kill me. But nobody believed her,
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: or maybe nobody wanted to believe her.
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: She kept trying, though, kept trying to escape. It's incredible, really,
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  Speaker 3: how many times.
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  Speaker 2: Eight times, eight separate attempts to run away. That's how
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: desperate she was.
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  Speaker 3: And each time she was caught, the punishment.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: Immediate and barbaric, tied to a chair in her room,
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  Speaker 2: hands feet and not for an hour or two, for
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: a minimum of fifteen days straight, fifteen days tied up,
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: fifteen days minimum. And during that time both d and
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: Oza would come in and beat her regularly.
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: That's I mean, the psychology of that. It's not just pain,
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: it's complete dehumanization over and over exactly.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: It's about breaking some one, completely, removing every shred of
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: autonomy for weeks at a time.
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: And then there was that really public incident the balcony is.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was dramatic. A neighbors starts screaming, not because
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: they saw abuse inside, No, because they saw aya trying
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: to climb down from the balcony. She'd tied sheets, curtains,
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: whatever she could find into a makeshift.
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  Speaker 3: Rope, trying to repel down, trying.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: Anything, and he just drags her back inside. Yeah, in
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  Speaker 2: full view.
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  Speaker 3: And this is the point, isn't it.
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  Speaker 1: This incredibly public, desperate act, a cry for help right
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: there on the street. Yet nothing changed, No neighbors stepped in,
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: no questions asked.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: That's what the sources say. Despite seeing that, despite knowing
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: the violence was ongoing, silence, total silence from the community.
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: It's chilling that silence just allowed it to continue, didn't it.
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: It paid the way for the final act. So we
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: get to twenty fourteen. Iya's nineteen oh and her duties
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: have expanded. She's now also caring for her baby half
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: sister Ide and us as child.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: Serving her captors by looking after their Yeah.
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: So she plans one last escape, a different strategy this time, right.
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  Speaker 2: She knows going to relatives is useless. She knows just
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: running away leads to being caught and punished worse, so
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: she goes straight to the police station. But she's smart
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  Speaker 2: about it. She knows the truth. My father is torturing me.
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  Speaker 2: We'll just get her sent back. It always has. So
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: she lies, tells them she's seventeen, not nineteen, says her
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  Speaker 2: parents died in the Revolution, asks for an orphanage.
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  Speaker 3: She's trying to use the system, but by creating a
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: story that bypasses her actual family, hoping the state would
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: protect her where everyone else failed, thinking maybe this is
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: the right place to finally get help.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly, and initially it sort of works. The police followed procedure.
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  Speaker 2: They put her in a temporary care home, start a
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  Speaker 2: background check, but you know, checks reveal things. A few
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: days later they figure out the lie.
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  Speaker 4: They find ID, and this, this is just staggering. The
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  Speaker 4: police call Id, we have your daughter. She's safe in
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  Speaker 4: a care home. And what does he do? Does he
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  Speaker 4: rush over?
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  Speaker 2: No? He refuses, refuses to pick her up, tells the
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: police basically good riddance, treats her like this great burden
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: he's finally managed to offload. Yeah, tells him the keeper
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  Speaker 2: keep her the ultimate rejection right there.
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  Speaker 3: Wow, So even when she's found and safe, he wants
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: nothing to do with her. But the care home that
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: wasn't the sanctuary she hoped for either.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Was it?
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  Speaker 2: No? Sadly not it was overwhelming for her. She's hearing
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: stories from other girls, maybe even tougher situations than her own.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: It wasn't safety, she felt. It was like falling into
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  Speaker 2: another kind of problem, a bigger institutional one. Maybe she
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: felt trapped again. So after just a week, she runs
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: away from the care home, this time seeking total escape, anywhere.
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  Speaker 3: But there and that freedom. How long did it last?
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: Only about a week She was recognized. Some acquaintances saw her.
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: On the street and they called AID.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, they contacted D probably thinking they were doing the
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: right thing, reuniting a family, not knowing the full horror,
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  Speaker 2: and AID came to get her. This was the final
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  Speaker 2: capture and.
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  Speaker 3: His mindset when he brought her back this last time,
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  Speaker 3: it was different.
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  Speaker 2: Was it was darker, yeah, colder. All that running away,
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: the police involvement, the gossip in the neighborhood. It had
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: damaged his precious reputation, his image as this respectable religious man.
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  Speaker 2: He couldn't have that, so he decided this time it
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  Speaker 2: had to stop permanently. The records are chillingly clear his
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: intent was now to finish her off.
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  Speaker 3: So this wasn't about teaching her manners anymore. This was
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: something else.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely, he and Isa they devised the final torture.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: Back in the chair, hands, feet bound again, but this
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  Speaker 2: time they also bind her neck, and they declare, this
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: time the bondage is to eternity.
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: Eternity.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: There are words, and they mean it. She stays bound
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: in that chair in her room continuously. Oh for seven months.
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: Seven months, tied to a chair. How is that even possible?
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: It's almost incomprehensible, But that was the reality. Unbound once
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: a day, quick trip to the toilet, that's it. Food
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: maybe once a day, sometimes less, barely enough to survive.
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  Speaker 2: The binding was constant to stop any movement, any hope
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  Speaker 2: of escape, and the beating didn't stop, the degradation didn't stop,
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: It went on day after day. This wasn't punishment anymore.
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  Speaker 2: This was a slow, deliberate execution.
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: Until after seven months, Zia.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: Goes into the room and she finds Ayah, skin blue, unresponsive, immobile, dead, and.
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: The first instinct, not grief, not shock, even cover.
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  Speaker 2: Up immediately as a frantically unties the ropes, tries to
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: hide the evidence, lays the body on the floor to
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: make it look less suspicious, and starts screaming for the neighbors,
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: trying to stage it as a sudden natural death, an illness.
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: Maybe, and d when he gets the news.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: Same reaction as always, complete coldness, nothing.
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: But the cover up didn't work this time.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: Why not one person? The health doctor. He came to
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: issue the burial permit, standard procedure, but he saw it instantly,
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: the weird blue color of the skin, and then the marks,
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: clear distinct marks on her hands, her feet, her neck
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: from the bindings, severe bruises everywhere, obvious signs of long
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: term torture. He refused the permit, reported criminal suspicion right away.
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: Thank goodness for that doctor. So the police arrive.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: Forensics, yes, and they were reportedly shocked. The state of
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: the body, of the state of the room. You can
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: still see where she'd been bound, the marks on the
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: chair probably, and all through this Yed is just blank,
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: no emotion.
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: What did the forensics finally confirm everything?
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: The doctors suspected, severe daily torture, clear evidence. And then
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: the neighbors finally they started talking once the police were
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: Their stories came out about the violence, the screaming, eating,
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: azas on behavior over the years, especially those last.
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: Seven months, and the official cause of death. It wasn't
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: just one thing, was it.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: No. It was a combination acute bleeding basically from her
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: hands and feet, caused by struggling against those ropes for months,
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: the constant friction, the pressure, combined with just extreme weakness malnutrition.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: She hadn't eaten anything at all for the last three
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: days of her life. Her body just gave out.
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: So Ed is arrested murder. Does he confess?
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: Initially no, deny, but eventually yes. He admits it. The
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: seven months, the binding, the torture, But his justification, it's unbelievable.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: He claims it was just to teach her manners, still
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: sticking to that.
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: Line even after everything.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: Even then, in the most shocking part, he insisted Ayah
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: killed herself, that she caused the wounds by struggling. He
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: took zero responsibility, showed zero remorse, believed he was innocent
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: right to the end.
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: A complete lack of accountability or humanity.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: Really, and that brings us back, doesn't it? To that
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: phrase the heart of stone, It wasn't just eat and Aza.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: It was the grandmother sending her back knowing the risk.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: It was Amrah, the mother who didn't ask about her
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: daughter once in seventeen years, not even when she heard
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: she was dead. Everyone seemed to treat Ayah's life as
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: an inconvenience, a burden. Those final seven months, they weren't
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: just cruelty. They were a methodical, slow execution, enabled by
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: everyone who looked away.
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: It's such a brutal story, the sheer accumulation of neglect,
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: abandonment and violence, and the failure of the community around her.
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: Because here's where it gets really interesting. Think about it.
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: Those fifteen day bindings, the balcony escape attempt, the final
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: seven months. Much of this wasn't totally hidden. There were signs,
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: there was noise, There was that desperate, visible plea from
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: the balcony. So if you were standing right there next
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: to someone who's clearly a victim, clearly desperate, what's the
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: real moral cost of just turning your head, of simply
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: looking away.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: This raises an important question, what is it in a community,
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: or maybe in us, that allows this kind of systemic
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: cruelty to happen right under our noses, And does our
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: silence in a way give it permission to continue