Sara Sharif killers sentencing LIVE: Father Urfan Sharif and stepmother Beinash Batool face life behind bars following murder of 10-year-old in Surrey before fleeing to Pakistan

A ‘veil of secrecy’ was placed over the Sara Sharif scandal last week after a court banned the naming of a judge who placed the little girl in the custody of her murderous father.

A High Court judge ordered that none of the professionals involved in the family court proceedings could be named, including social workers, experts and guardians.

They also included the family court judge who made the fateful decision to give Urfan Sharif custody before he beat the ten-year-old to death.

The extraordinary ban sparked a secrecy row as Keir Starmer said questions must be answered about the appalling case.

• Read the story by Rebecca Camber, Andy Jehring and Mary O’Connor here

The Sara Sharif case is ‘utterly unspeakable,’ the Education Secretary has said today.

Bridget Phillipson told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:

What we have seen and heard through the progress of the criminal trial is utterly unspeakable.The degree of violence that the poor young girl experienced is just absolutely sickening.

I am pleased that her murderers will today be facing justice in their sentencing.

Hammond Road in Woking is a well to do family estate filled with charming well kept houses but one semi-detached property at the end of the terrace lies abandoned.

The grass outside the property is overgrown and on the empty driveway two floral tributes lie sodden in the rain.

The only clue as to what happened here is found in the garden: where a plastic children’s slide sits abandoned by the fence.

It was here, behind the door of Number 10, that Sara Sharif endured torment beyond belief at the hands of her own family members culminating in her tragic death at the age of just ten-years-old.

Unbeknownst to their neighbours, the Sharif family were living a double life as evil and sadistic torturers of Sara.

• Read Tom Hussey’s exclusive report here

Speaking after Sharif and Batool were convicted, Sara’s mother, Olga Domin (pictured above with Sara), said in a statement:

My dear Sara, I ask God to please take care of my little girl, she was taken too soon.

She will always be in our hearts, her laughter will bring warmth to our lives. We miss Sara very much. Love you Princess.

Sara’s siblings and half-siblings who were taken to Pakistan following her murder remain in the city of Jhelum, with their paternal grandfather.

Efforts to return them to the UK are still ongoing.

• Read more about Olga Domin’s reaction to her daughter’s murder here

Rising from her first-class seat to address the police officers who had boarded the flight at Heathrow to arrest her, Beinash Batool coolly asked: ‘I think you’re looking for us?’

As she and her husband, Urfan Sharif and his brother Faisal Malik were led off the plane in handcuffs, their fellow passengers might have been forgiven for thinking they had returned to face justice willingly.

But nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, the three suspects were only delivered to British police on September 13 last year following an extraordinary – and tenacious– operation in Pakistan to flush them out.

When they escaped on a British Airways flight from Heathrow to Islamabad on August 9 – the day after Sara’s murder – they knew very well that Pakistan had no extradition treaty with the UK.

• Read the full story by Andy Jehring and Shahzaib Wahlah here

Within hours of Sara’s death in August last year, Sharif and Batool booked flights to Pakistan for the whole family, including her siblings and half siblings.

The defendants returned to the UK on September 13 2023 – leaving the children behind – and were detained within minutes of a flight touching down at Gatwick airport.

In his trial, Sharif initially blamed Batool for the violence before dramatically accepting ‘full responsibility’, leaving jurors open mouthed and tearful.

He later appeared to backtrack, denying he had bitten or burned Sara or covered her head in a hood.

Jurors heard that bite marks on Sara’s arm and thigh did not match either Sharif or Malik and only Batool had refused to give impressions of her teeth.

Sara Sharif’s two-year abuse ordeal was missed by social services, despite teachers raising concerns over bruises on the ten-year-old on at least three occasions.

The schoolgirl was subjected to brutal beatings at the hands of her cruel father Urfan Sharif at their £500,000 three-bedroom home in Woking, Surrey.

His wife Beinash Batool, 30, and brother Faisal Malik, 29, were party to the years-long sickening abuse in which Sara was hooded, burned, strangled and tied up.

Neighbours would hear ‘gut-wrenching screams’ coming from the home which was often followed by a woman shouting: ‘Go to your room, you f***ing b*****d.’

Concerned teachers recorded seeing bruises on Sara and made a report to social services.

But astonishingly a decision was made not to look into the family. Months later, Sara was brutally killed.

MailOnline has set out the 15 missed opportunities to save her here.

Sara suffered more than 25 broken bones, iron burns on her bottom, scalding marks to her feet, and human bites during a campaign of abuse spanning at least two years.

Sharif had hit her with a cricket bat and iron bar, throttled her, and thrown a mobile phone at her head.

Sara was also tied up with packaging tape and her head covered with a makeshift hood during regular bouts of punishment that would have left her in excruciating pain, jurors had heard.

Even as she lay dying in Batool’s lap last August 8, taxi driver Sharif had come home and whacked her in the stomach for ‘pretending’.

Batool had told her sister that Sharif would ‘beat the crap’ out of his daughter but failed to do anything to stop it, even calling him home from work to dish out punishments, the court was told.

Here is a timeline of events that led to Sara Sharif’s death and the trial of her father Urfan Sharif, stepmother Beinash Batool and uncle Faisal Malik:

• 2009 – Sharif meets his Polish girlfriend Olga online and they get married eight or nine months later. He also becomes a part-time taxi driver.
• 2011 – Sharif begins driving a taxi full-time.
• 2013 – The couple’s daughter, Sara, is born.
• 2014 – Olga and Sharif have an acrimonious break-up. Sharif alleges that his former wife had ‘bitten’ another child and ‘abused’ Sara during and after their marriage.
• 2014 – Sara goes into foster care. Sharif meets Batool in the autumn of that year.
• January 2015 – Sara is returned to Sharif’s care, subject to Olga leaving the house.
• May 2015 – Batool moves in to live with Sharif, in Woking. Olga makes allegations against Sharif about domestic abuse and child abuse. Sara is placed back into Olga’s care.
• 2015 to 2017 – Sharif is permitted supervised contact with Sara.
• 2016 – Sharif says Batool hit him with a wooden lemon squeezer after he wanted to leave.
• 2017 – Sharif and Olga’s divorce is finalised. Sharif and Batool get married.
• 2019 – Sara makes allegations of abuse against Olga.
• 2019 – The family court awards Sharif custody of Sara.
• May 2021 – Batool sends a WhatsApp message to her sister saying Sharif ‘beat the crap out of Sara’ and she wants to report him, but does not.
• Summer 2022 – Batool confides to her sister that Sharif ‘beat Sara up’ and cannot send her back to school ‘looking like that’.
• June 6, 2022 – A member of staff at Sara’s school notices she has a bruise under her eye.
• June 13, 2022 – Sharif discusses a wish to home school Sara with staff, although she does go back.
• December 17, 2022 – Sharif’s brother Faisal Malik arrives in the UK from Pakistan and moves in with the family.
• January 2023 – Sara starts wearing a hijab to school, which the prosecution allege is to hide her bruises. Malik starts a course in international business and management at Portsmouth University.
• March 8, 2023 – Malik starts working at McDonald’s in Woking.
• March 10, 2023 – A member of staff at Sara’s school notices a bruise on her chin and dark bruise under her right eye. A referral is made to social services.
• March 16, 2013 – A decision is made by social services to take no further action on the referral.
• April 17, 2023 – Sara is taken out of school. The same month, the family move into a new house in Hammond Road, Woking.
• August 8, 2023 – Following a period of escalating violence, Batool calls Sharif home. He believes Sara is just pretending and whacks her with a metal pole in the stomach as she is dying. Within hours Sharif and Batool are booking flights to Pakistan.
• August 9, 2023 – Sharif, Batool and Malik travel to Islamabad from Heathrow Airport.
• August 10, 2023 – Sara is found dead in a bunk bed at home after Sharif called police from Pakistan to say he had beaten her ‘too much’. A confession note is found on a pillow next to the body.
• August 15 – A post-mortem examination identifies dozens of injuries including 25 fractures, a broken hyoid bone, human bite marks, iron burns to the bottom and scalding water burns to her feet with signs of restraint.
• September 6, 2023 – Sharif and Batool appear on television and Batool says Sara died in an ‘incident’.
• September 13, 2023 – Sharif, Batool and Malik are detained on a plane at Gatwick Airport after travelling back to the UK from Pakistan.
• September 15, 2023 – The defendants are charged with murder and causing or allowing Sara’s death. They deny the accusations against them.
• October 14, 2024 – The three defendants go on trial at the Old Bailey.
• November 13, 2024 – Sharif dramatically admits responsibility for Sara’s death after previously accusing his ‘evil and psycho’ wife Batool.
• December 11, 2024 – Sharif and Batool are found guilty of murder and Malik is convicted of causing or allowing Sara’s death.

Sara Sharif dreamed of being a fairytale princess, even as the reality of her Cinderella story in the leafy town of Woking was a nightmare from which she would never escape.

The 10-year-old had gone to live with her Pakistani father Urfan Sharif and ‘beautiful’ young stepmother Beinash Batool following a custody battle with her Polish mother Olga.

Any hopes that her turbulent early years were behind her would have quickly been squashed as a pattern of abuse emerged within two years.

She was put to work doing the laundry and housework by Batool, who liked to keep up appearances and keep a tidy home.

Batool made her views clear by repeatedly complaining to her sister Qandeela that Sharif was hitting Sara for being ‘naughty’ and ‘rude and rebellious’.

She blamed her stepdaughter for her own misery by baiting Sharif, saying she cut up his clothes, hid his keys and tore up documents, even suggesting she had a ‘jinn’ or demon in her.

According to the prosecution, Batool was complicit in Sharif’s abuse because of the number of times she would call him home to sort out his daughter’s behaviour, knowing what would happen.

Sharif did not hold back with his punishments and tried to beat her into submission with a bat and pole, but nothing could dim her bright, bold and fierce nature.

Hello and welcome to MailOnline’s live coverage as Sara Sharif’s father and stepmother face sentencing at the Old Bailey for killing the 10-year-old after years of horrific abuse.

Last week, Urfan Sharif, 42, and stepmother Beinash Batool, 30, were found guilty of her murder following a trial at the Old Bailey.

Her uncle, Faisal Malik, 29, who lived with them, was convicted of causing or allowing her death after a jury deliberated for nine hours and 46 minutes.

The three defendants will return to the Old Bailey on Tuesday when Mr Justice Cavanagh’s sentencing is expected to be broadcast from the court.

Sara was found dead in a bunkbed at her home in Woking, Surrey, after her father rang police from Pakistan to confess he had beaten her ‘too much’.

We will bring you live updates from 10am at the Old Bailey.