Mother killed baby son

A woman has been jailed for life for murdering her 13-month-old baby son "in an explosion of violence" when she suspected her husband would leave her.

Somalian refugee Sara Yusuf, 30, was told by Old Bailey Judge Graham Boal that something had made her kill Abdi "contrary to the natural instincts of any mother".

The court was told she banged the baby's head on the floor twice and had shaken him at the Thorncliffe Hotel, in Heston, west London in September 2000.

Ian Peddie QC, defending, suggested she was suffering from post natal depression, having given birth to her other son two months before.

Concocted story

Then she concocted a story and refused to accept her guilt.

The judge said she believed she would be left alone with Abdi and his brother after overhearing her husband making a call to his brother.

He said Yusuf had been living in one room with her family at a hotel in what to her was a foreign country and he accepted that her circumstances had been stressful and far from ideal.

The loss of Abdi and her family would serve as her "worst punishment" said Judge Boal, who did not make a minimum term recommendation in open court.

Abdi suffered a fractured skull during the attack but Yusuf, who denied murder, said her son fell down a flight of stairs.

But the prosecution said his injuries were "wholly inconsistent" with such a fall.