Menna, a young woman from Alexandria, grew up with little parental guidance after her parents divorced, leaving her and her younger brother largely unsupervised. As she matured, Menna became involved in unstable relationships, including one with an incarcerated man, Mostafa, who fathered her daughter. Tragically, Menna and her partner, Mohamed, brutally murdered the three-year-old child. They attempted to cover up the crime, claiming the child fell from a balcony and disposing of her body in a microbus. Law enforcement uncovered the truth, resulting in the arrest of Menna, Mohamed, and Menna’s father, all facing trial for their roles in the horrific act.
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Produced by:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
We're diving deep into a true crime narrative today, pulling
apart the really extraordinary details of a case that stretches
across fifteen years, and it serves as just a devastating
study in human apathy.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
It really does. When you look at the material, you
realize this isn't just a story about a crime, it's
about a family's complete moral erosion.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Our journey actually starts near the end in Alexandria, back
in twenty fourteen. Picture this sudden commotion, flashing lights, security
forces descending on a well, what looked like a quiet home.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Yeah, and they weren't there for something simple. They were
there to arrest a woman named Mena and her father
for something well, far more complex and cold.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
So this deep dive, it really forces us to ask
a central, pretty devastating question. When a whole family just
turns a blind eye, what's the ultimate cost.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
To get to that answer, you have to understand that
the twenty fourteen arrest that was just the final act.
The roots of this strategy they were planted much much earlier. Right,
we need to rewind the clock fifteen years, go back
to nineteen ninety nine. That's where the foundation of neglect
really began the thing that made everything else possible.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Okay, nineteen ninety nine, so men, it's just seven years old.
Then she has a younger brother, their father. He's a
truck driver, off and away on long trips, international routes.
But he did provide money.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Yeah, financially supportive, that's the key phrase. The mother was
a homemaker. But that year, the whole family structure just collapses.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
The marriagens and the fallout for the children was I
mean immediate and kind of shocking.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
In its speed, astonishingly fast. The parents' divorce and the
way they decided to just abandon their roles as well,
it's something else. The mother, we learn she quickly left
both children with the father. She just like that, almost instantly.
She essentially washed her hands of any maternal responsibility, and.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
She didn't hang around. The material shows really clearly that
just four months after the divorce was done, men, as
mother remarried, moved to a completely new area.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
And cut off her relationship with her kids just gone.
But the father, who was now technically the sole caretaker,
he didn't exactly step up, did he. No.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
He was described as always having been sort of passive.
He kept up his trucking job, using me, you know,
the providing money excuse for being away all.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
The time exactly. He shuffled Mena and her brother between
his sister and their grandmother. He paid the bills, sure,
but he was completely checked out of their emotional lives,
their well being.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Wait a minute, isn't it? I mean, it feels rare
for both parents to show that level of immediate collective detachment.
This sounds less like neglect and more like a deliberate
choice by both adults.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
That's the critical point here. Their collective focus seems to
have been just self preservation convenience. They mistook financial support
for actual parenting.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
And this environment it didn't just neglect Mena, did it.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
No. It essentially trained her, trained her to seek validation,
stability from outside sources. It prepared the ground for the
risky choices she'd make later.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
On, which brings us to around two thousand and nine.
That desperation for connection. It peaks. Men Is seventeen, now
searching for the love she never got at home, and
she finds Mustafa.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Right, Mustafa, a man who our sources confirm already had
a criminal record, and they decide, look, we'll just look together,
no marriage needed.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
They just saw it as unnecessary formality apparently.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
And look at the father's reaction to this. He knew
about it, knew they were living together unmarried, but his
only stated concern that Mostafa should take care of Mena.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Take care of her. Not the legality, not the.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Risk, none of it mattered as long as she wasn't
his problem anymore.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Essentially, so for two years, Mena and Mostafa live like this,
and they have a daughter. Now this part is particularly jarring.
Despite the whole situation being illicit, the father was reportedly
overjoyed about the baby. They even celebrated the traditional asbua,
that's the birth week celebration.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
They celebrated a life they had intentionally failed to legitimize
from the art. And this is where the legal vulnerability
of the child becomes just so.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Critical, because the child had no official papers, no legal identity, none.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
And this wasn't some tragic oversight, you know, it was
a known fact. The entire family allowed this child to
exist completely unprotected by the system right from birth, legally invisible.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Which makes her incredibly vulnerable later on.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Precisely, and then just like that, the first adult male
figure in this new setup disappears. Three months after the
baby's born. Mustafa gets arrested aggravated robbery and assault prison.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
So men is left holding an undocumented baby totally.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Alone, completely alone. Her original family mother and father still
completely detached, no meaningful support. She's isolated, responsible for a
child with no legal status.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
And that isolation, it seems, drove her straight back into
looking for relationships for stability, maybe provision.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
It seems so. Over the next year, while Mustafa's locked up,
she has multiple sort of transient relationships, and again the father,
his reaction is staggering.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Let me guess no objection, absolutely none.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
His standard was unbelievably low. Any man Mena was with
was fine as long as they helped cover her expenses.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
It confirms the family's moral compass wasn't just broken. It
was transactional, purely transactional.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
That's a good word for it. Then, about a year later,
the daughter's now three years old, still undocumented, Menna meets Mohammed,
a shop owner also with a criminal past, and.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
For Mena this felt like the real deal, a replacement
for Mustapha.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
That's how she saw it, true love stability. So she
moves into Mohammad's apartment again, no marriage, and the father. Incredibly,
he congratulated her on finding new love. He saw it
as Mena finally settling down, solving her problem, his problem,
maybe exactly. Mohammad agreed the little girl could live with them,
but he set one condition, no more to learn.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
And the father, the supposed protector, He just happily signed
off on this, seeing it only is fixing her finances.
It's just it's hard to reconcile that level of wilful blindness.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
And that new stable life. It crumbled almost instantly. The
honeymoon period was catastrophically short.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Mohammad became irritated by the child very quickly.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
He found her presence, her noise disruptive, especially during intimate moments.
The sources show the abuse started almost right away, right
in front of Mena.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
And Mena's reaction. This is deeply troubling.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Her only priority became keeping Mohammed happy, maintaining that relationship.
She seemed completely detached, almost indifferent to the physical evidence
of the escalating torture.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
We're talking severe injuries.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Here, right, severe fractures, arms and legs, extensive bruising, wounds
all over the little girl's face and body, and Mena
just watched it happen.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
With her own upbringing, that void left by her parents.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
It completely warped her priorities. Her desperate need for validation
from Mohamma just obliterated any maternal instinct. The child became
an obstacle to her happiness. She prioritized the abuser, and.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
That obstruction led to well, the unthinkable.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Mohammed confessed he reached a breaking point. The child's crying
became intolerable to him. He decided to murder the.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Little girl, and Mena her reaction.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Pure shocking compliance. The source material just says she was
fine with the decision, fine.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
With it, okay. So they plotted. They planned to stage
an accent.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Mohammad suggested throwing the girl off the balcony, make it
look like a tragic fall. He actually started to do it,
placed the three year old on the clothesline over the railing.
Oh my god, but he stopped. He had to pause.
He noticed neighbors were watching.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
From below, so the scrutiny saved her temporarily temporarily.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
That awareness that someone might see made him abort the attempt.
Right then he brought her back inside closed the balcony door.
The murder was averted, but only for a few hours.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Just three hours later, Mina and Mohammad left the apartment together.
Menna was carrying her.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Daughter motionless by this point lifeless.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
But then something shifts slightly, a deviation from the plan.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Yes, a really critical moment, it suggests, maybe a flicker,
a desperate, last second flicker of conscience. And Mena, after
they separated on the street, she changed her route, didn't
tell Mohammed where'd she go. She rushed to a nearby hospital.
A friend worked there as a nurse. She went there
clutching her daughter's body, maybe maybe holding onto some tiny fragment.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Of hope, but the nurse.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
The nurse confirmed instantly the child was dead. But more damningly,
she immediately recognized the signs, the extens of bruising, the wounds.
This wasn't an accident, this was murder.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
And the nurse was going to call the police.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Prepared to alert them. Yes, doing the right thing, and
Mena panicked, terrified, terrified of the homicide charge, obviously, but
also terrified of the legal mess around the child being undocumented.
She grabbed the body and fled the hospital all the run,
carrying the evidence, the ultimate evidence. And who does she
call in that moment of pure panic, Her passive father,
(09:01):
of course, and his response. It's just one of the
most chilling parts of this whole thing. After Minna told
him the child had been murdered, beaten to death by Mohammed,
his advice was purely self serving. What did he say,
get rid of the body, immediately, dump it anywhere, and
don't come back to Mohammed's house. His first thought was
keeping the problem away from his doorstep.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Unbelievable. So Minna followed his instructions. She did.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
She went to a major microbus station in Alexandria, if
you know those places there, chaotic, crowded public transport hubs,
constant movement.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
And she boarded a microbus with the body, yes.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Roade for just a short time, then slipped away unnoticed,
leaving the body of her three year old child behind
on the seat for a stranger to find.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
And that's how the authorities finally got involved.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Exactly locals found the child alerted the police. When the
forensic teams arrived, they knew instantly this wasn't an accident,
wasn't just neglect. The severe signs of prolonged torture. It
screamed homicide.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
But the investigation hit a snag.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Initially, Yeah, it moved slowly at first. That microbus station area,
it just lacked good surveillance cameras. Police initially thought maybe kidnapping, torture,
then disposal.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
But the break came from the hospital incident.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Right An alert connected the body found in the microbus
to the woman who'd fled the hospital earlier with a beaten,
deceased child. The police located the nurse.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
And she provided details about Mena.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Key details that led them quickly to Mena's father's house,
which brings us back to those twenty fourteen arrests we
started with.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
And when arrested Mena and Mohammed, they lied.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Both of them immediately started claiming the girl fell accidentally
from the balcony, said they only panicked because she didn't
have official papers.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
But the forensics, the.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Forensic medical examiner's report completely destroyed that story. It stated
conclusively severe prolonged torture injuries totally inconsistent with a fall.
This confirmed it would murder.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
And then came the witnesses.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Yes, police solidified the case. They found neighbors who had
seen Mohammed putting the child on the clothesline during that
earlier failed attempt, And crucially, they found other witnesses who
saw Mena and Mohammad carrying the motionless child late that night,
directly contradicting Mohammad's alibi that he was supposedly at a
shop when the fall happened.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
And the final nail on the coffin.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
For their defense, the father's interrogation. Under pressure, he finally broke.
He confirmed Menna had called him, admitted Mohammad beat her
until she died, and he confessed he told her to
dump the body, confirmed his role in covering up a murder.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Wow, So their hopes of lesser charges like negligence.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Gone completely gone. The forensics, the witnesses, the father's own confession.
It ensured all three Mena, Mohammed, and the father were
referred for prosecution for murder.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
The complexity here is just Yeah, it's deeply unsettling, isn't it. It
shows this calculated series of choices over fifteen long years,
not just some tragic accident.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Absolutely, from that initial collective abandonment by the parents in
ninety nine right through to the horrific disposal of the
child in twenty fourteen. The facts lay out an indictment
of an entire immediate family unit, a.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Family that consistently prioritized its own convenience, its own self
preservation above the life of this small, undocumented girl.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
And the case really reveals how that systemic indifference, that
conscious decision to leave her without a legal identity, made
her uniquely vulnerable. Her life in the eyes of those
who should have loved her became disposable, and that.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Lack of official status played right into their final cold
decision to just abandon her body.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Yeah, when you look at the whole progression, like the
cold divorce, celebrating the asbuo for a child, they wouldn't
even register, the brutal torture, Muhammad's plan, Mena's compliance, and
then that final chilling advice from the father.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
The only question left really looking back at this entire
journey is the one they kind of defined the investigation
from the start. Is this truly possible
We're diving deep into a true crime narrative today, pulling
apart the really extraordinary details of a case that stretches
across fifteen years, and it serves as just a devastating
study in human apathy.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
It really does. When you look at the material, you
realize this isn't just a story about a crime, it's
about a family's complete moral erosion.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Our journey actually starts near the end in Alexandria, back
in twenty fourteen. Picture this sudden commotion, flashing lights, security
forces descending on a well, what looked like a quiet home.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Yeah, and they weren't there for something simple. They were
there to arrest a woman named Mena and her father
for something well, far more complex and cold.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
So this deep dive, it really forces us to ask
a central, pretty devastating question. When a whole family just
turns a blind eye, what's the ultimate cost.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
To get to that answer, you have to understand that
the twenty fourteen arrest that was just the final act.
The roots of this strategy they were planted much much earlier. Right,
we need to rewind the clock fifteen years, go back
to nineteen ninety nine. That's where the foundation of neglect
really began the thing that made everything else possible.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Okay, nineteen ninety nine, so men, it's just seven years old.
Then she has a younger brother, their father. He's a
truck driver, off and away on long trips, international routes.
But he did provide money.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Yeah, financially supportive, that's the key phrase. The mother was
a homemaker. But that year, the whole family structure just collapses.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
The marriagens and the fallout for the children was I
mean immediate and kind of shocking.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
In its speed, astonishingly fast. The parents' divorce and the
way they decided to just abandon their roles as well,
it's something else. The mother, we learn she quickly left
both children with the father. She just like that, almost instantly.
She essentially washed her hands of any maternal responsibility, and.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
She didn't hang around. The material shows really clearly that
just four months after the divorce was done, men, as
mother remarried, moved to a completely new area.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
And cut off her relationship with her kids just gone.
But the father, who was now technically the sole caretaker,
he didn't exactly step up, did he. No.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
He was described as always having been sort of passive.
He kept up his trucking job, using me, you know,
the providing money excuse for being away all.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
The time exactly. He shuffled Mena and her brother between
his sister and their grandmother. He paid the bills, sure,
but he was completely checked out of their emotional lives,
their well being.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Wait a minute, isn't it? I mean, it feels rare
for both parents to show that level of immediate collective detachment.
This sounds less like neglect and more like a deliberate
choice by both adults.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
That's the critical point here. Their collective focus seems to
have been just self preservation convenience. They mistook financial support
for actual parenting.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
And this environment it didn't just neglect Mena, did it.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
No. It essentially trained her, trained her to seek validation,
stability from outside sources. It prepared the ground for the
risky choices she'd make later.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
On, which brings us to around two thousand and nine.
That desperation for connection. It peaks. Men Is seventeen, now
searching for the love she never got at home, and
she finds Mustafa.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Right, Mustafa, a man who our sources confirm already had
a criminal record, and they decide, look, we'll just look together,
no marriage needed.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
They just saw it as unnecessary formality apparently.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
And look at the father's reaction to this. He knew
about it, knew they were living together unmarried, but his
only stated concern that Mostafa should take care of Mena.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Take care of her. Not the legality, not the.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Risk, none of it mattered as long as she wasn't
his problem anymore.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Essentially, so for two years, Mena and Mostafa live like this,
and they have a daughter. Now this part is particularly jarring.
Despite the whole situation being illicit, the father was reportedly
overjoyed about the baby. They even celebrated the traditional asbua,
that's the birth week celebration.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
They celebrated a life they had intentionally failed to legitimize
from the art. And this is where the legal vulnerability
of the child becomes just so.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Critical, because the child had no official papers, no legal identity, none.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
And this wasn't some tragic oversight, you know, it was
a known fact. The entire family allowed this child to
exist completely unprotected by the system right from birth, legally invisible.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Which makes her incredibly vulnerable later on.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Precisely, and then just like that, the first adult male
figure in this new setup disappears. Three months after the
baby's born. Mustafa gets arrested aggravated robbery and assault prison.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
So men is left holding an undocumented baby totally.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Alone, completely alone. Her original family mother and father still
completely detached, no meaningful support. She's isolated, responsible for a
child with no legal status.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
And that isolation, it seems, drove her straight back into
looking for relationships for stability, maybe provision.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
It seems so. Over the next year, while Mustafa's locked up,
she has multiple sort of transient relationships, and again the father,
his reaction is staggering.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Let me guess no objection, absolutely none.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
His standard was unbelievably low. Any man Mena was with
was fine as long as they helped cover her expenses.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
It confirms the family's moral compass wasn't just broken. It
was transactional, purely transactional.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
That's a good word for it. Then, about a year later,
the daughter's now three years old, still undocumented, Menna meets Mohammed,
a shop owner also with a criminal past, and.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
For Mena this felt like the real deal, a replacement
for Mustapha.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
That's how she saw it, true love stability. So she
moves into Mohammad's apartment again, no marriage, and the father. Incredibly,
he congratulated her on finding new love. He saw it
as Mena finally settling down, solving her problem, his problem,
maybe exactly. Mohammad agreed the little girl could live with them,
but he set one condition, no more to learn.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
And the father, the supposed protector, He just happily signed
off on this, seeing it only is fixing her finances.
It's just it's hard to reconcile that level of wilful blindness.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
And that new stable life. It crumbled almost instantly. The
honeymoon period was catastrophically short.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Mohammad became irritated by the child very quickly.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
He found her presence, her noise disruptive, especially during intimate moments.
The sources show the abuse started almost right away, right
in front of Mena.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
And Mena's reaction. This is deeply troubling.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Her only priority became keeping Mohammed happy, maintaining that relationship.
She seemed completely detached, almost indifferent to the physical evidence
of the escalating torture.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
We're talking severe injuries.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Here, right, severe fractures, arms and legs, extensive bruising, wounds
all over the little girl's face and body, and Mena
just watched it happen.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
With her own upbringing, that void left by her parents.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
It completely warped her priorities. Her desperate need for validation
from Mohamma just obliterated any maternal instinct. The child became
an obstacle to her happiness. She prioritized the abuser, and.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
That obstruction led to well, the unthinkable.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Mohammed confessed he reached a breaking point. The child's crying
became intolerable to him. He decided to murder the.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Little girl, and Mena her reaction.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Pure shocking compliance. The source material just says she was
fine with the decision, fine.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
With it, okay. So they plotted. They planned to stage
an accent.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Mohammad suggested throwing the girl off the balcony, make it
look like a tragic fall. He actually started to do it,
placed the three year old on the clothesline over the railing.
Oh my god, but he stopped. He had to pause.
He noticed neighbors were watching.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
From below, so the scrutiny saved her temporarily temporarily.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
That awareness that someone might see made him abort the attempt.
Right then he brought her back inside closed the balcony door.
The murder was averted, but only for a few hours.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Just three hours later, Mina and Mohammad left the apartment together.
Menna was carrying her.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Daughter motionless by this point lifeless.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
But then something shifts slightly, a deviation from the plan.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Yes, a really critical moment, it suggests, maybe a flicker,
a desperate, last second flicker of conscience. And Mena, after
they separated on the street, she changed her route, didn't
tell Mohammed where'd she go. She rushed to a nearby hospital.
A friend worked there as a nurse. She went there
clutching her daughter's body, maybe maybe holding onto some tiny fragment.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Of hope, but the nurse.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
The nurse confirmed instantly the child was dead. But more damningly,
she immediately recognized the signs, the extens of bruising, the wounds.
This wasn't an accident, this was murder.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
And the nurse was going to call the police.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Prepared to alert them. Yes, doing the right thing, and
Mena panicked, terrified, terrified of the homicide charge, obviously, but
also terrified of the legal mess around the child being undocumented.
She grabbed the body and fled the hospital all the run,
carrying the evidence, the ultimate evidence. And who does she
call in that moment of pure panic, Her passive father,
(09:01):
of course, and his response. It's just one of the
most chilling parts of this whole thing. After Minna told
him the child had been murdered, beaten to death by Mohammed,
his advice was purely self serving. What did he say,
get rid of the body, immediately, dump it anywhere, and
don't come back to Mohammed's house. His first thought was
keeping the problem away from his doorstep.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Unbelievable. So Minna followed his instructions. She did.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
She went to a major microbus station in Alexandria, if
you know those places there, chaotic, crowded public transport hubs,
constant movement.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
And she boarded a microbus with the body, yes.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Roade for just a short time, then slipped away unnoticed,
leaving the body of her three year old child behind
on the seat for a stranger to find.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
And that's how the authorities finally got involved.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Exactly locals found the child alerted the police. When the
forensic teams arrived, they knew instantly this wasn't an accident,
wasn't just neglect. The severe signs of prolonged torture. It
screamed homicide.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
But the investigation hit a snag.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Initially, Yeah, it moved slowly at first. That microbus station area,
it just lacked good surveillance cameras. Police initially thought maybe kidnapping, torture,
then disposal.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
But the break came from the hospital incident.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Right An alert connected the body found in the microbus
to the woman who'd fled the hospital earlier with a beaten,
deceased child. The police located the nurse.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
And she provided details about Mena.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Key details that led them quickly to Mena's father's house,
which brings us back to those twenty fourteen arrests we
started with.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
And when arrested Mena and Mohammed, they lied.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Both of them immediately started claiming the girl fell accidentally
from the balcony, said they only panicked because she didn't
have official papers.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
But the forensics, the.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Forensic medical examiner's report completely destroyed that story. It stated
conclusively severe prolonged torture injuries totally inconsistent with a fall.
This confirmed it would murder.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
And then came the witnesses.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Yes, police solidified the case. They found neighbors who had
seen Mohammed putting the child on the clothesline during that
earlier failed attempt, And crucially, they found other witnesses who
saw Mena and Mohammad carrying the motionless child late that night,
directly contradicting Mohammad's alibi that he was supposedly at a
shop when the fall happened.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
And the final nail on the coffin.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
For their defense, the father's interrogation. Under pressure, he finally broke.
He confirmed Menna had called him, admitted Mohammad beat her
until she died, and he confessed he told her to
dump the body, confirmed his role in covering up a murder.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Wow, So their hopes of lesser charges like negligence.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Gone completely gone. The forensics, the witnesses, the father's own confession.
It ensured all three Mena, Mohammed, and the father were
referred for prosecution for murder.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
The complexity here is just Yeah, it's deeply unsettling, isn't it. It
shows this calculated series of choices over fifteen long years,
not just some tragic accident.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Absolutely, from that initial collective abandonment by the parents in
ninety nine right through to the horrific disposal of the
child in twenty fourteen. The facts lay out an indictment
of an entire immediate family unit, a.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Family that consistently prioritized its own convenience, its own self
preservation above the life of this small, undocumented girl.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
And the case really reveals how that systemic indifference, that
conscious decision to leave her without a legal identity, made
her uniquely vulnerable. Her life in the eyes of those
who should have loved her became disposable, and that.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Lack of official status played right into their final cold
decision to just abandon her body.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Yeah, when you look at the whole progression, like the
cold divorce, celebrating the asbuo for a child, they wouldn't
even register, the brutal torture, Muhammad's plan, Mena's compliance, and
then that final chilling advice from the father.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
The only question left really looking back at this entire
journey is the one they kind of defined the investigation
from the start. Is this truly possible
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