Student nurse cleared of attempting to kidnap newborn baby from neonatal ward after just 48 minutes of jury deliberation
A student nurse was yesterday cleared of attempting to kidnap a newborn baby from a neonatal ward after a jury took just 48 minutes to deliberate.
Safia Ahmadei, 36, allegedly repeatedly entered the ward at the hospital where she was on placement to 'scout' for a baby.
Jurors were told Mrs Ahmadei 'took vows' with a married neighbour in an Islamic ceremony - which was not legally binding - for the purpose conceiving a child for the man and his wife, who had been unable to conceive.
Mrs Ahmadei told the jury of seven women and five men: 'In the Muslim religion, if the first wife cannot conceive or she doesn't have a child, the husband is allowed to get married twice.'
But Mrs Ahmadei told jurors she had suffered a miscarriage at the end of January - almost a month before her arrest - and then 'lied' to her husband that she had given birth to twin boys out of fear he would leave her if he knew the truth.
Student nurse Safia Ahmadei was cleared of attempting to kidnap a child from a neonatal ward
The defendant bowed her head in the dock after the unanimous 'not guilty' verdict was read out, but broke down moments later when judge Simon Ward told her she would now be released.
The judge added that it had been a 'difficult and unusual case'.
During a two-week trial at Wolverhampton Crown Court, prosecutor Seamran Sidhu had alleged that Mrs Amadei went to the neonatal ward at the city's New Cross Hospital in search of a child 'who could pass for her own after faking a pregnancy'.
Mrs Ahmadei was said to have focused her attention on a particular premature baby after quizzing the infant's mother on their racial heritage.
But she told jurors she returned to the ward with blankets after the mother said the baby was cold.
Mrs Ahmadei told jurors she had miscarried at the end of a nightshift, but had been too 'scared' to tell the husband because he had been left devastated when she suffered another miscarriage early last year.
It was alleged Mrs Amadei went to the neonatal ward at Wolverhampton's New Cross Hospital in search of a child 'who could pass for her own after faking a pregnancy (file photo)
As a result, when he asked her days later if she had given birth, she told him she had, but that one of the twins had died and the other was in a 'poor condition' in the hospital.
Prosecutor Seamran Sidhu had previously told the court that by the time the trainee nurse was arrested after repeatedly entering the neonatal ward in mid-February, she had become 'increasingly desperate' and 'needed to produce a baby'.
The court heard Mrs Ahmaedi travelled to the UK in 2011 on a spouse visa, after an arranged marriage with her first husband in their homeland of Afghanistan.
She gained British citizenship in 2020 and graduated in business studies in 2022. She enrolled on a nursing course at the University of Wolverhampton in 2023.
