Posted by Updated / Monday, 15 Dec 2025 17:58
RTÉ Courts Reporter
A woman has told the Central Criminal Court of the horror of witnessing her partner smile at her as he murdered their eight-year-old daughter in front of her last year.
Aisha Noor Al Kattib described Mohammed Al Shaker Al Tamimi as a monster and said the images of her daughter’s murder were carved into her mind forever.
35-year-old Mohammed Al Shaker Al Tamimi, with an address at Lower William Street, New Ross, Co Wexford was jailed for life after he pleaded guilty to the murder of his eight-year-old daughter Malika Noor Al Kattib.
But the judge ruled the life sentence should not begin until after he serves a ten-year sentence imposed for the attempted murder of the child’s mother on Sunday, 1 December 2024.
The judge ordered the sentences to be served consecutively because of what he described as the extraordinary level of violence used and the extreme experience of Ms Al Kattib being subjected to watching her child murdered before her eyes.
Mr Justice Paul McDermott said there were two victims in the case and they could not be simply rolled into to one case. It would be an injustice not to impose a consecutive sentence, he said.
The Central Criminal Court heard harrowing evidence of how Al Tamimi had held his daughter in front of her mother and repeatedly stabbed her after the girl had tried to intervene as he attacked her mother.
Detective Garda Dónal Donoghue told prosecuting counsel Anne Rowland that Aisha Noor Al Kattib had been brought up in Waterford and converted to Islam at the age of 17.
She met Al Tamimi, a Kuwati national, in Belfast in August 2015 and became pregnant but did not live together during the pregnancy as he had returned to live in England.
She later joined him in London after the birth of their daughter but just months later had to be rescued by family and the police after Al Tamimi had locked her in their flat and would not allow her to leave.
Police had to cut the bars on a window to free her.
The court was told Al Tamimi served a sentence in London for attempted rape of another woman.
Contact was made again in 2023 when he saw his daughter briefly in London.
After that he started to contact Ms Noor Al Kattib expressing concern that his daughter would behave according to the Islamic faith.
He arrived in Ireland in 2024 asking for forgiveness and wanting to be part of his daughter’s life and promised to get a job.
He did not get a job and had at one point had tried to claim asylum here.
The court heard the family went through a good period but Al Tamimi complained about his partner’s family.
After a visit to her mother on 1 December last year Ms Noor Al Kattib returned with her daughter to their home in New Ross where a row ensued with her partner as he threatened to return to England.
He also told her she and his daughter did not respect him because his daughter had not hugged him when they returned.
He began checking his partner’s phone and making accusations against her before he hit her on the head with the phone.
When she told him she would not be intimidated by him said she was going to leave the house he grabbed a knife and began stabbing her.
Eight-year-old Malika came downstairs and was telling him to stop when he struck her with the knife.
Ms Noor Al Kattib told her daughter to run while Al Tamimi went to get a larger knife but the child fell and was held by her father as he “prepared to cut her throat while staring at” her mother, Ms Rowland said.
After his daughter had fallen to the ground he continued to stab her.
Multiple stab wounds inflicted ‘with severe force’
The child received multiple stab wounds to her face, neck and trunk with the wounds to her trunk which were inflicted “with severe force” proving fatal having pierced her lung and the lining of the her heart.
She also had defensive wounds on her hands and arms.
Ms Noor Al Kattib had lost power in her legs due to her wounds but managed to dial 999 and tell emergency services what had happened while also pulling herself along the ground to the front door to raise the alarm.
A neighbour who had first aid skills began to help put pressure on her neck wound but she repeatedly asked them to go inside to help her daughter.
The court was told efforts to resuscitate the girl by neighbours and emergency services failed and she was pronounced dead.
Al Tamimi was observed lying on his back on living room floor but was breathing.
Ms Noor Al Kattib was taken to hospital where she remained for a week while she had surgery. She had ten stab wounds and suffered an extreme grief reaction.
The court was told she suffered extreme trauma and flashbacks of the attack and continues to suffer from the psychiatric and physical effects of the attack.
She has not been able to return to her home and is still “haunted by fear that she is danger”.
Ms Rowland said that after the attack Al Tamimi began stabbing himself but with lesser force.
He was arrested on 3 December and told gardaí: “I slaughtered my daughter, I didn’t have any mercy, I don’t want any mercy.”
Det. Garda Donoghue agreed with Defence Counsel Michael Bowman that he had also told gardaí that his “wife and daughter were innocent” and that they did not deserve to die adding that he wanted the highest form of punishment.
He also repeatedly said that he did not want to live and said a form of “blindness” came into his eyes when was carrying out the attack.
In her victim impact statement Ms Noor Al Kattib said the murder of her daughter had destroyed her life.
Mother says images of daughter’s murder ‘carved into mind forever’
She said she had witnessed her daughter’s murder and the images “are carved into my mind forever” and come back in flashbacks.
She described her former partner as a monster and a devil as she saw his face change on the night of the murder and “the mask slip”.
She added that every action he took that night was “deliberate and calculated”.
She said Al Tamimi had “smiled directly into my face as he cut Malika’s throat and while he was hurting her”.
She said she would never forget that smile that “follows me in every nightmare”.
She also described how she stayed with Al Tamimi for just ten months after their daughter was born and left because of his behaviour.
“I will live with the overwhelming regret of accepting his promises.”
He was only back in her life for a short time before the attacks because she allowed him for her daughter’s sake and because he had sworn on the Quran that he would never harm them.
She said because of her faith as a Muslim she believed him and believed that he may have changed after he promised to go for counselling.
“Even though I know I’m not to blame [because of ] his manipulation and evil, I still carry this guilt I wish I had never believed him and I wish I never let him back into our lives,” she said.
“This guilt is something I will carry for the rest of my life.”
“I will live with the overwhelming regret of accepting his promises,” she added.
“It is a very heavy burden I have to carry and I know a mother should never have to question herself for hoping her child’s father would protect her. It adds to the heartbreak I already live with.”
She also said the physical effects of the attack continue to this day and having left hospital in a wheelchair, she later found the strength to learn to walk again after seeing her 70-year-old mother have to carry her shopping.
She said she wanted to be strong enough to come to court to speak for her daughter and wanted everyone to know her name which meant Princess of Light.
Mr Justice McDermott said the violence erupted from a domestic dispute about a demand to examine a phone and an assertion that the defendant’s wife and daughter were not showing him respect.
The judge said the location of the offending was an aggravating factor, in the family home where a mother and daughter should have felt at their most secure and most protected.
He said the father of the child should have been their protector but was the opposite.
He said the offending was carried out in the context of someone who wanted their own way and wanted to dominate and ensure his will prevailed.
He said it was hard to comprehend the horror of having to witness a child’s murder.
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