Woman jailed after death of her unborn twins

Published on Friday 6 November 2009 21:46

A WOMAN who killed her unborn twins by injecting herself with drugs to induce their birth was jailed yesterday after going on the run.

Faiso Sahil's babies were to be taken into care, and to avoid social services, she decided she would make them arrive three weeks earlier than their due date.

Sahil, who trained as a midwife in her native Somalia, was taken into hospital on 8 April 2007 after complaining of severe pain in her abdomen. She asked to be induced several times, and claimed she was having contractions, but midwives and doctors told her they could see no signs of labour and that the twins were developing healthily.

She was discharged two days later but re-admitted the same day. She found bottles of the drug Syntometrine in a trolley in her hospital delivery suite and injected them in the early hours of 11 April 2007.

Sahil, who was 37 weeks pregnant, thought the drug would induce her labour, as a similar drug was used in Somalia and in the UK for this purpose, but her twins, a boy and girl, died. She accused a midwife, who was then arrested, of administering the drug..

In May this year Sahil, 35, of Ullswater Road, Southmead, was found guilty in her absence of perverting the course of justice and sentenced to 14 months in prison.

Delivering Sahil's sentence in her absence in May, Judge Mark Horton said: "The defendant was well aware that social services were considering taking these two babies from her shortly after their birth.

"She decided that she was going to use every means at her disposal to prevent that from happening."

She was also sentenced to three and a half years after previously admitting child cruelty, for which she was being investigated during her pregnancy. The two sentences are to run consecutively.

Sahil had fled to Finland but was returned to the UK to hear her fate at Bristol Crown Court yesterday.