Mother starved daughter to death, murder trial hears

The body of a seven-year-old girl who died after being starved under a "punishment regime" looked like an African famine victim, a court heard today.

Khyra Ishaq's "emaciated" body was found in May last year after she had allegedly been held captive by her mother, Angela Gordon, and Gordon's boyfriend, Junaid Abuhamza.

Khyra and five other children had been locked out of a fully stocked kitchen for up to six months, Birmingham crown court was told. On the rare occasions they were fed, they were given dry bread or porridge, which they had to eat with their hands on the floor. If the children were caught "stealing" food they were punished with "detention", made to stand outside in the cold, beaten with a cane or made to overeat until they were sick, the court heard.

Neighbours reported hearing screams of "let me out, let me out" in the middle of the night, and saw the "abnormally thin" Khyra in the garden in her underwear.

Police and social workers went to the home in Handsworth, Birmingham, several times but Gordon would not let them in, the court heard.

Jurors wept when they were shown pictures of Khyra taken before and after her death on 17 May last year. Handing over the first picture, taken in April 2007, the prosecution barrister, Timothy Raggatt QC, said: "That is Khyra Ishaq as she was in life, about a year before the events you are going to be concerned with.

"You see there a picture of a normally developing healthy girl. That is how her wider family remember her and describe her in life." Raggatt then asked the jury to turn to the picture taken at postmortem, which he suggested was reminiscent of something seen in an African famine. "That did not happen naturally – it was not a result of accident or disease. It was result of deliberate action. That is why there's a charge of murder."

The jury were shown photographs of a fully stocked kitchen and fridge. The court heard a lock was fitted high up on the kitchen door to keep the children out.

Raggatt said: "That household was not a household that was short of food, there was ample food in it for everyone. The supply of food was controlled, it was controlled by these two [defendants]."

The court was told Khyra died of an infection. But Raggatt said the fact she died of an infection was "really neither here nor there. The cause of her death was the physical state that she was in. In a nutshell, their [position] is exactly the same as anyone who kept a prisoner and sets out to starve them to the point where their life is at risk. It's just as much murder ... as if they had shot, stabbed, beaten or strangled Khyra to death."

Gordon, 34, and Abuhamza, 30, had a duty in law to care for Khyra but had betrayed that duty in every possible sense, while also mistreating five other children in their control, the prosecutor said.

"All of them, as well as being starved, were subjected to violence of differing degrees," Raggatt said.

The jury was told that Abuhamza, who denies murder, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to child cruelty charges relating to the five other children.

Gordon denies murder and five charges of child cruelty alleged to have been committed between December 2007 and 17 May 2008.

The court heard Khyra had lived a "normal and happy family life" while her natural parents were together. But the marriage failed and in 2007 Gordon and Abuhamza became a couple, with Abuhamza moving into the home.

In December 2007 things changed "dramatically", Raggatt said, when Khyra was removed from school and Gordon refused to admit visitors.

Summarising defence case statements prepared before the trial, Raggatt said Gordon had denied depriving Khyra of food.

"She is saying that none of this is her doing. Angela Gordon believes Khyra may have suffered from E coli or been poisoned by food given to her by her neighbours."

Abuhamza had acknowledged he was party to the unlawful killing of Khyra, ­Raggatt said.

The trial continues.