Failed Pakistani asylum seeker Sohail A., who is suspected of killing his two-year-old daughter in Germany, was apprehended by police in the Spanish coastal city of San Sebastián.
The 33-year-old fled Hamburg last week before police arrived at his home where they found his two-year-old daughter dead with severe injuries to her neck last Monday. Authorities in Hamburg issued an international arrest warrant for the failed asylum seeker and he was found Sunday by Spanish police who arrested him and an unidentified companion, German magazine Focus reports.
The week had been torture for Lubna A., the 33-year-old wife of the suspected murderer, according to an interview. Her sister said Lubna had immediately left the home where her daughter had been killed and moved in with her parents.
The sister reacted to hearing of the 33-year-old’s arrest saying: “We were just waiting for this message every day,” and added, “We are so relieved!”
She said that Sohail A. had only wanted to have the child as a way for him to stay in Germany after he had been rejected for asylum in 2012. While the couple were married under Islamic law, their marriage was not formally recognised by the German state.
“Before Ayesha’s birth, Sohail was sweet, but after that, he was got worse,” the sister said and added that the 33-year-old regularly beat his wife and her young son from a previous relationship. Despite filing reports with the police, no action was taken on the incidents of violence.
A few days before the murder, Sohail A. was rejected for a residency permit and told his wife to drop the accusations of domestic abuse against him, which she refused to. He later told her that he had taken their two-year-old daughter on a train, though she had in fact been killed.
The murder is the second major child murder this year involving a failed asylum seeker. Earlier this year, a 41-year-old asylum seeker stabbed a five-year-old to death at an asylum home before being shot by police.
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