A father has been found guilty of organising the spraying his own son with acid at a Home Bargains store in Worcester, England, along with five other men the prosecution said had been enlisted into the plot.
The attack was caught on CCTV cameras at the Home Bargains store in Tallow Hill, Worcester, in July 2018. In footage shown to the jury a man can we seen walking up to two children looking at footballs with an object in his hand. Moments later, the child runs to his mother.
The father, who was reported at the beginning of the trial to be from Afghanistan but who lived in Wolverhampton, England, has not been identified by the court to protect the identity of his son, was found guilty alongside co-conspirators Adam Cech, Jan Dudi, Norbert Pulko, Jabar Paktia, and Saied Hussini.
The court is still considering a seventh defendant, Martina Badiova.
The feud between the father and mother of the injured child, who is said to have made a good recovery since, dated back to the couple breaking up in 2016 and the wife taking their three children with her. The guilty man wanted more access to his children so wanted to prove his wife was not fit to take care of their children, the BBC reports, so created a plan to injure a child in her care so he could take custody.
During the trial it was claimed the father believed by winning the custody battle with his wife, she would be forced to cancel her divorce proceedings as well. The Times reported in July that the unnamed father and Paktia followed the initial proceedings through an Afghan interpreter, while Cech, Dudi, and Pulko used a Slovakian interpreter.
Sentencing will follow.