Accused 'lost control of thoughts'
A mother has told a court she "lost control" of her thoughts before throwing her six-day-old baby down a tower block rubbish chute.
Jaymin Abdulrahman, said to have been suffering from a postnatal psychosis, told jurors she did not plan to cause any harm to the baby before the incident last September. The Crown alleges the 25-year-old Iraqi national deliberately placed her baby daughter into the chute with the intention of killing her.
Abdulrahman, who denies attempted murder and inflicting grievous bodily harm, wept several times while giving evidence on the third day of her trial. Speaking through a Kurdish interpreter, she told the court she was in tears while cleaning her bathroom shortly before placing the baby in the chute.
"I was extremely sad," she told jurors. "I went to the living room, I put the baby in a rubbish bag and I threw her away. After I had done so, I just couldn't believe what I had just done, and I couldn't understand why I did it. I was in shock."
Answering questions from defence barrister Rachel Brand QC, Abdulrahman added that she had not "planned" to do what she did and had not thought about what she was going to do.
"Even now as I am speaking to you, I am still in a state of disbelief of what I have done. I have lost control of my thoughts when I did so. I can't tell whether I was crying at the time or not, but I have done this. I wasn't aware of what I was doing. If I thought that by doing so I would do some harm to the baby, I wouldn't have done it."
Asking Abdulrahman about her time in hospital after giving birth, Miss Brand asked her client: "Did you have any thoughts at all of causing harm to her?"
The defendant replied: "No. That kind of thought never came to me. This is something I could never imagine. I even despised people who were abusive to children."
Abdulrahman was "tired, sad and exhausted" in the week after her daughter's birth and unaware of why she was crying. At the start of the defence case, Miss Brand claimed Abdulrahman's mental condition was so severe it prevented her from forming an intent to kill or cause serious injury to her daughter, who fell more than 40ft into a bin store.
Abdulrahman also denies a charge of causing grievous bodily harm with intent. Her daughter, whose name cannot be published for legal reasons, suffered skull fractures and brain injuries in the fall at a block of flats in Wolverhampton.
