Children's testimonies expected to end, parents next week

The trial of Azizul Raheem Awaluddin and Shalwati Nor Shal, the Malaysian couple on trial for the alleged abuse of their children in Sweden, continues with the testimony of the children expected to come to an end by today.

Their second youngest son Adam Azizul Raheem, 11, will continue to testify in court at the Solna District court in Stockholm and is expected to finish by midnight (Malaysian time) tonight.

Azizul and Shalwati themselves, it was understood, would testify next week, followed by the prosecution’s expert witnesses.

According to an official court document obtained by Astro AWANI previously, Adam had admitted to investigators to being beaten by his parents.

In transcript of recorded interviews with one investigator Insp. Jessica Palm, Adam spoke about several incidents of being allegedly hit, including by clothes hanger and a ‘small stick’.

In one incident when he was nine, where his dad allegedly hit him which a ‘small stick’ and the pain ‘bit’ into his arm.

“It felt like someone was biting me what an animal bit his hand… it was red when I was in the bathroom… then so I poured water on it and it became normal again,” said Adam in the document, which was in the Swedish language.

There was also an alleged incident where Adam was hit by his mother by hand on the back of his shoulder when he got lost.

Adam also recounted an incident where his father allegedly struck him on the back so hard, for calling his other brother ‘stupid’, that he stumbled and almost tripped.

Secondary school teacher Shalwati and her husband Azizul Raheem, a Tourism Malaysia official, were detained on Dec 18 last year.

They were arrested after their eldest son Ammar, told staff at his school that he had been beaten, leading the school to report the matter to the authorities.

Ammar, together with his elder sister Aishah, 14, Adam, 11, and Arif, seven, were placed then under the protection.

After over a month of detention, and being the focus of media frenzy back home in Malaysia, Azizul and Shalwati were charged with committing gross violation of integrity against their four children, aged between seven and 14 years, and with assault.

According to statements by their children, Shalwati was accused of hitting them at their home in Stockholm for several years, even with items like a piece of wood, a coat hanger, canes, a carpet beater and a belt.

The alleged offences took place in the family’s home in Spanga, a suburb of Stockholm, between Sept 15, 2010 and Dec 17, 2013.

Sweden outlawed corporal punishment in 1979, the first country in the world to do so. Since then 34 other nations have followed suit, abolishing all forms of physical punishment on children.