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The Nine-Year Spiral: How Parental Abandonment and System Failure Led to the Sharqiya Double Child Murder · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Sharkia Governorate. Imagine the scene. A village street, usually settling
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: down after sunset, but tonight it's just chaos. Flashing lights,
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: painting the walls, a crowd of neighbors huddled together, whispering
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: fearful hmm.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: You can all feel that tensions.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Exactly, and right in the middle of it, this apartment
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: building cordoned off. You hear muffled sounds, security forces moving inside,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: urgent but trying to keep it low key, and outside
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: a woman wailing, just awful, heart stopping sounds. Then suddenly
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: screeching tires. A car slams to a halt.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: It's Mail Ismail.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: He looks pale, completely frantic. He's just driven like mad
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: from Cairo after getting a call.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: He wouldn't even need to ask what happened Woody, the police,
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: the neighbor.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: No, he knew inside that apartment, his apartment now a
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: crime scene. Was his son, four year old Abdullah dead?
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Just devastating.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: This is our deep dive today. It's a story that
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: unfolds over a decade from nineteen ninety eight to two
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: thousand and eight. A domestic tragedy, it really is. We're
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: talking about Adua and his older sister Nada. Two children
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: basically caught in this spiral of conflict, parental abandonment, and
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: ultimately just horrific cruelty in their own home.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: And what we want to do is trace those moments,
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: those turning points, the decisions made by the adults that
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: paved the way for this, this absolute horror.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's more than just a murder case, isn't it.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely, It's a chilling study, really a study in failure.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: How unchecked family problems, parental negligence, how it can create
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: the perfect storm.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: The perfect environment for something like that.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: Exactly, the whole system of safety just broke down, completely collapsed.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: And that collapse didn't happen overnight, It started years before.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Let's go back back to the beginning. Like you said,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: it seems stable then, didn't it. Nineteen ninety seven On.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: The surface, yes, Ismail was a university graduate. He'd landed
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: a government job in Cairo, which was a.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Big deal back then, status security.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Very big deal, even with the commute that daily grind
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: from Sharkis to Cairo went back.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: But it was stable, and in nineteen ninety eight he
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: married Mona. A year later, Nada.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: Was born and initially the reports say they agreed, let's
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: postpone having more kids. Let's focus all our attention, our
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: resources on Nada.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Sounds responsible, proactive, even it does.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: But the cracks started showing almost right away, just a
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: year after Nada was born.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: And crucially, Mona kept it quiet at first, the arguments,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: the insults, maybe even early physical stuff. She tolerated it.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: She didn't tell her family.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Right, and that's silence. That initial tolerance, it kind of
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: allowed the conflict to grow. Didn't it to fester behind
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: closed doors hidden from everyone else?
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: It normalized it maybe within the four walls of that
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: apartment could be.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: But ironically, while they were keeping the real problem secret,
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: they were apparently getting constant interference from both extended families.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Ah about how to raise Nada, their life choices exactly.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: So you have this weird dynamic, a loud, crowded public
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: family life, but built around this silent, increasingly toxic private one.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: That silence couldn't last.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: Now, by two thousand and two, it exploded. The fighting
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: wasn't private anymore. Screaming, cursing, neighbors could hear it, and
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: physical violence.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: Hitting, and Nata was old enough to see it by then.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: She was three, witnessing her father hit her mother frequently.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the abuse was becoming regular. The whole situation was
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: completely volatile. Yeah, and yet yet this work gets strange.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: Despite all this chaos, Mona's mother steps in and she
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: insists they have another child.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: What why?
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: Her reasoning was that Nada needed a sibling. That's what
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: the family.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Demanded, and they actually they went along with it. In
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: the middle of.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: All that, they complied, a ghoul was born. Not It
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: was five by then, old enough to really understand what
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: she was seeing when her father struck her mother.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Wow, so the fighting is public knowledge now, family neighbors,
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: everyone knows.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: Everyone knows, which leads us to Mona's next move, a
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: really drastic one. Okay, a few years later, she decides
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: she's had enough. She wants a separation. But how she
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: goes about it it's shocking. Wouldn't she do Instead of
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: fighting for custody, she used the children as leverage. She
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: knew Ismael hated that Chiro commute, that raising two young
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: kids alone while doing it would be incredibly tough, So
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: she waived custody completely, just hand it over eight year
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: old Nada and three year old Abdullah entirely to Ismael's.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Care just like that, left them, just like that.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: The calculation, it seems, was that the pressure would force
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: him to give her a better financial settlement or agree
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: to her terms.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: That's cold, using her own children, It's.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: A brutal calculation, and she moved on quickly. After the
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: mandatory three month waiting period.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: She remarried, leaving Ismail scrambling. He needed someone to look
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: after the kids, right, they were temporarily with his mother
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: or sisters.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: Yes, so he decides to remarry too. He finds the
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: horr of Del Salam. She agrees immediately, and she makes
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: this big promise.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: The promise to raise them like a mother and.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: More exactly those were her words, and that promise that
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: marked the beginning of the real nightmare for.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: Nada and Abdullah, because Ismail immediately made them call Sahar mama.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: Right, which you can imagine. They resisted two young kids
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: whose mother just left, but they were forced to accept
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: it coerce and.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Sahar she wanted children herself, didn't she. But this wasn't
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: maternal affection none at all.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: She started beating them almost daily under the guise.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: Of discipline, and it got worse if they mentioned the.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: Real mother, it intensified. If they expressed missing Mona, the
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: beatings got harder. It was deliberate.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: Cruelty, like that incident with Nada's hair.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that was horrific. Ismail comes home, finds Nada,
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: his daughter, with her head completely.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: Shaved, and Sahara's excuse lice.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: She claimed it was lye. But the reality everyone knew,
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: especially the children. It was just another layer of torment, psychological, physical,
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: pure control.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: And the most heartbreaking part of this phase for.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: Me, it's that the children try to get help, especially
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: not They told Ishmael what was happening. They begged him,
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: literally begged him to let them go live with Mona,
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: and she He refused to listen, flat out refused. He
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: found their pleas annoying. She was more concerned about his
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: own pride, his ongoing battle with Mona, than their safety.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: Willful blindness.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: He chose not to see, He absolutely chose not to see.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: He prioritized his own defiance over protecting his own children
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: from clear ongoing abuse. And this went on for three years,
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: three long years, until Mona finally came back into the
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: picture properly. She saw the state of their dame. The
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: kids were in their physical condition, their fear, and apparently
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: her maternal feelings were finally belatedly.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: Stirred, so she tried to get them back.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: She did. She spent about two months trying to regain
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: custody directly, but Ishmael and his family fought her tooth
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: and Nail resisted everything.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: So she had to take legal action.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: Yes, she fouled a custody lawsuit, but she did something
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: quite strategic. Instead of asking for custody herself, knowing she'd
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: be married and perhaps wanting to avoid a direct fight with.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: Ismail, she asked for custody to be given to her mother,
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: the kid's grandmother, exactly, and.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: The court agreed. It ruled in favor of the maternal grandmother.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: Okay, so legally the children should have gone to the
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: grandmother's house.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: Safe, should have. But this court ruling, it just poured
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: fuel on a Ismail's fire. His focus wasn't okay, the
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: court decided, let's ensure the kids are safe.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: No, it was all about defying Mona.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: All about it. He started looking for loopholes, ways to
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: block the order. He even apparently considered divorcing Sahar temporarily
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: just to look single.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: On paper and argue he should have custody.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: Precisely anything to beat Mona and keep the kids away
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: from her side of the family.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: But Sahar found out about this potential divorce.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: Planned she overheard him discussing it, and that right there,
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: that was the critical tipping point, the.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Catalyst, because suddenly she saw her whole situation threatened everything.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: The marriage, the control over the children, any financial security
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: or inheritance she might have expected. It was all tied
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: to Nada and Abdullah being there. If they left, or
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: Ismail divorced her to keep them, she could lose everything.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: So her hostility towards the children it became murderous lethal.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: She saw them as the direct obstacle to her own
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: security in Ismail.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: Instead of following the court order protecting.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: His kids, he did the opposite. He was leaving for
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: his Cairo commute, but before he went, he told saharb
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: right in front of Nabah and Abdullah, if anyone comes
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: from the court or Mona's family to take the children,
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: hide them.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: He told her to defy the court order in front
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: of the kids.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: Yes, imagine how terrifying and confusing that must have been
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: for them their father telling their stepmother to hide them
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: from potential rescue. He basically sealed their fate.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: With that instruction, and then he left for work.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: He left three hours later, his phone rang, turned back come.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Home immediately, and he arrives back to that scene. We
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: started with the police, the neighbors.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: And the confirmation inside the apartment, four year old Abdullah
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: strangled with an electric wire hanging from a door.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: Oh God, and the initial story, how did they explain it?
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: The explanation came from Nada, nine years old, in deep shock.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: She told the police she'd done it accidentally, that they
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: were playing and she somehow strangled him with the wire.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: And the police they accepted that a nine year old
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: accidentally hanging her brother while playing.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: Incredibly, yes, they ruled it accidental homicide by a child.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: The forensic report confirmed strangulation, of course, but not as story.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: Given her agent, shock was accepted as the official narrative,
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: but it wasn't the truth, not the whole truth. A
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: week later, Sahar reveals a little piece of it, but
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: only to Ismail.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: What did she tell him?
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: She confided that, yes, the kids had been fighting just
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: before Babdullah died. Abdullah apparently didn't want to go to
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: the grandmother's, but Nada did. Sahar admitted she deliberately kept
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: this argument from the police and from Mona.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: Why tell Ishmael that was she testing his reaction, setting
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: something else up?
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: It feels like it, doesn't it, minimizing her own role,
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: maybe gauging his loyalty, perhaps laying the groundwork for what
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: came next. Because she knew Nada wanted.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: To leave, and what happened to Nada after Abdilla's death,
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: Sar kept her completely isolated, ban from going outside, ban
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: from talking to anyone.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: Nada was psychologically shattered, grieving, terrified, trapped, and then, three
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: weeks after Abdulla's funeral, just three weeks, Nada makes one
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: last plea to her father, please let me go live
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: with my.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: Mother at Ismael, after everything, after one child was dead
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: under suspicious circumstances.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: He refused, still prioritizing his stubborn pride, his fight with
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: Mona over his terrified, traumatized daughter's desperate request.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: He said, no, that refusal it triggered the end, didn't it?
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: It seems so. Moments later, Sahar saw Nada talking to
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: her young cousin Mohammad, who was about the same age nine,
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: and Sahar panic cure panic. She must have feared Nada
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: was telling him the truth about it, Doulah. She immediately
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: grabbed Nada rushed her back into the apartment away from
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: the cousin.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: What happened then?
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: About an hour later, Sahara casually tells the family Nada
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: has taken a nap and she leaves the apartment for
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: a while. She leaves, she leaves four hours later she
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: returns Ismail still isn't back from work. Sahar goes inside
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: and finds the second horrifying scene Nada Nada strangled with
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: a rope hanging from the.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Ceiling, and Sahar's story, this time.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: The second lie. She told the police Nada was deeply depressed,
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: devastated by her father's refusal to let her go to
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: her mother. She must have committed suicide, and Ismail backed
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: this up tragically. Yes, he concerned to the police that
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: he had refused not his request just hours before she
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: was found dead. He unknowingly helped build Sahar's false narrative.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: But the forensics surely they questioned suicide by hanging for.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: A nine year old they did. This is a critical failure.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: The medical examiner confirmed strangulation, but specifically noted it was
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: highly improbable for a time child that age to commit
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: suicide in that manner.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: Highly improbable, so doubt was officially raised.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: Yes, glaring forensic doubt. Plus, you have two siblings dead
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: by strangulation in the same house within three weeks. Yet
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: incredibly they closed the case. It was registered as suicide officially.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: There was a lack of evidence pointing elsewhere, no obvious
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: suspects presented at that moment, despite the improbability.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: But someone still had suspicions.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: Thankfully, Yes, security forces weren't entirely convinced. The circumstances were
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: just too unnatural, too cootidental. They kept looking quietly.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Perhaps, and the breakthrough came from the cousin.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: Little Mohammad, the nine year old boy Nada had been
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: talking to just before Sahar dragged her inside.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: What did he know?
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: He went to his grandmother. He couldn't keep the secret.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: He told her what Nada had confessed in those last
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: few moments of whispered conversation, which that t Sahar had
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: killed Abdullah and that Sahar had threatened Nada told her
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: she'd kill her too. If she ever revealed the truth.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: Wow, that brave little.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: Absolutely his information changed everything. It gave the police the
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: leverage they needed. They summoned Sahar again.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: And this time, confronted with Mohammad's testimony, she.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: Broke, completely collapsed. She confessed to everything, both murders.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Abdullah Fir.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: Yes, she admitted she killed Abdullah right after he said
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: he wanted to leave her to go to his mother.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: It was immediate reactive rage and fear and Nada. She
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: killed Nada three weeks later out of pure cold fear,
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: fear that Nada would expose her after Sahar saw her
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: talking to Mohammed. It was about self preservation, silencing the
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: only witness.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: So a full confession reenactment.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: A full confession documented over hundreds of pages, more than
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: five hundred, apparently a crime reenactment. The evidence was overwhelming.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: Sahar was sentenced to execution.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: Such a chilling end, both children gone in less than
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: a month.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: It's almost unbearable to contemplate. And when you look back,
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: the critical takeaway here is about the layers of failure,
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: multiple points where this could have should have been stopped.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Mona's role.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: For instance, Mona's initial silence yes, but then her calculated
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: decision to abandon the children, using them as bargaining chips
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: that put them directly in harm's way.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: And Ismail's negligence, it is just staggering.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: Staggering is the word. His pride, his ego, his focus
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: on defying Mona completely overshadowed his duty to protect his children,
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: refusing to execute a court order that was designed for
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: their safety. That's direct culpability in creating the final fatal situation.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: The police and forensics too, accepting the first story, the
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: initial ruling on the second death, despite the doubts.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: Those were critical institutional failures. The system hesitated or failed
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: to connect the dots quickly enough when decisive action based
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: on the evidence, especially the forensic doubt was needed. Everyone
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: who should have been a shield failed them.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: So it leaves you thinking about the weight of these choices.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Small decisions may be driven by ego or anger or fear,
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: but they accumulate.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: They absolutely accumulate. When does neglect bo and from personal
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: conflict become a conscious, lethal abandonment of responsibility. That's the
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: hard question here.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: What's the moral accountability not just of the killer, but
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: of those who create and sustain the environment where such
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: evil can take root and ultimately destroy innocent lives.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: That is the question. This whole tragic story forces us
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: to confront the accountability of inaction, of prioritize pride, of
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: systemic failures. Where does that responsibility truly lie