Brit pilot jailed in ex-Soviet hell prison could be freed after ex-wife's ‘chilling confession to killing baby' emerges
Mohamed Barakat, 46, is serving a 20-year sentence in a high security jail in Kazakhstan but has always maintained his innocence.
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Bombshell recordings have now emerged of Madina Abdullayeva, 28, apparently admitting to unintentionally causing the death of her daughter Sophia.
Barakat was sentenced in 2020 after a judge ruled he smashed his "smiling" baby during a drunken drug-fuelled hotel rampage, crushing her head against a wall.
But the chilling audio which has been newly uncovered could mean the commercial pilot, who flew for a subsidiary of Hong Kong Airlines, could be freed or face a retrial.
Madina was the main prosecution witness at his trial in Kazakhstan.
Barakat received a maximum sentence under the criminal code because of the "aggravating circumstance' of committing the murder 'in a state of alcoholic and drug intoxication', said the appeal court.
The country's prosecutor's office recently triggered an investigation 'on newly discovered circumstances', namely a confession by the pilot's glamorous ex-wife that she killed the baby.
Detailed analysis including a 'forensic video-phonoscopy examination' reveals the confession to be Madina's voice, the pilot's legal representatives have been informed.
It also found there was no tampering of the WhatsApp recording.
The pilot himself recorded his ex-wife from inside his prison.
'I kill her….,' Madina is accused of posting, in evidence now being examined by police.
'I know you did,' replied the pilot, who has always maintained his innocence and previously claimed that his wife accidentally killed the child on 24 October 2019, but blamed him.
Madin allegedly said on the recorded call to Barakat how she broke Sophia's neck at the hotel in Almaty.
'I left…and then when I come back, she is awake and crying because she's hungry.
'I start to feed her. And then she start to poo…
'And I try to wash her bum. And when I wash her, I break her neck…'
She also told him she wanted to have another child with him.
In a video made by privately-schooled Barakat, he said of her 'confession': 'Two days ago, we had another argument.
'I told her I would never have another baby with her until she told me what happened to my daughter, Sophia Barakat.
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'And here you can see, she wrote 'Call me please'.
'And then, she writes 'I kill her'.
In later conversations, Madina repeatedly asks him to 'forgive me'.
These accounts are startlingly different from the version accepted by judges at the pilot's trial and appeal.
The courts ruled that Madina had been beaten by her husband - despite no evidence she had any injuries - and left their hotel room after which he killed the child.
The wife then opened the door and picked up the motionless girl, rushing down to the hotel lobby, where she was seen on security cameras.
Madina had shouted: 'He killed my child, he hit her,' according to one hotel staff member.
Hotel workers said the baby was 'blue'.
Earlier they remembered the British girl as 'always smiling' during the family's stay at the Intercontinental Hotel in Almaty.
The wife collapsed several times in the lobby as staff called medics who found the baby to be dead.
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There are a host of other inconsistencies regarding the verdict.
In turning down an appeal by the pilot, three women judges in 2021 ruled that 'the guilt of the convict [Barakat] was proved by the testimony of a witness - a hotel maid - that she heard the sounds of banging on the wall, after which the crying of the child immediately fell silent'.
The judges said: 'More than ten witnesses testified that they saw the woman [Madina] with the child in her arms, who ran to the reception and reported that her drunken husband had killed her child.'
Yet law enforcement broke their own rules in using photographs not the corpse to establish fatal wounds.
Based on these errors, the court found Sophia died from 'multiple impacts…caused by repeated blows' - namely from Barakat banging his child's head repeatedly against the walls or doors, smashing the child's brain.
The pilot was said by the judge to be drunk and under the influence of drugs yet astonishingly no drugs were found in his blood or urine, according to documents in the case.
The only evidence of drug use was a toxicology test showing traces of THC in vomit from the hotel mattress, yet the centre has dismissed use of such evidence as unreliable.
'CCTV shows him walking steadily into the hotel, handing balloons to his daughter, and carrying her. Hotel staff said he did not appear drunk,' said his lawyer Din-Mukhamed Narymbetov.
Additionally, Madina was the main prosecution witness based on evidence she gave in the aftermath of the killing.
'Her statements were obtained with procedural violations, and she eventually retracted them,' said the lawyer.
Barakat said after obtaining his ex-wife's 'confession': 'Madina knows I am innocent. My family knows I'm innocent. The lawyers who stood with me - they know I'm innocent.'
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