A British commercial pilot has been jailed for 20 years after being found guilty of murdering his daughter while he was drunk and high on drugs at a luxury hotel.
Airbus captain, 42, “crushed the brains” and fractured the skull of one-year-old baby on October 24 last year by banging her head against a wall, a court in Kazakhstan ruled this week.
Shocking CCTV shows his wife Madina, 23, who had earlier told staff at the five star InterContinental Hotel in Almaty that her husband had beaten her, rush into the lobby while carrying the unconscious child.
Ten witnesses told how Madina claimed her husband had killed the child.
One hotel staffer said she shouted: “He killed my child, he hit her”.
The wife collapsed in the lobby several times as staff called medics, who confirmed Sophia was dead.
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”, the court statement said.
A judge rejected the London-born pilot’s claim that the child was fatally injured in an “accident” resulting from an “epileptic fit”.
The wounds were caused by “repeated impact with hard objects and surfaces, and could not be obtained from a fall”, judge Bakhytkhan Bakirbayev said.
The dad, who denies ever hurting his daughter, was found to have a stash of cannabis in his hotel room.
Barakat – a pilot employed by a subsidiary of Hong Kong Airlines – looked stunned at the verdict in the Zoom trial and will serve his entire jail sentence in Kazakhstan jail.
UDPATE 17 July 2025
The pilot jailed for murder in a hellhole ex-Soviet prison could be freed after his ex-wife “confessed” to killing their baby daughter according to The Sun.
