ABU DHABI // A housemaid who used her underwear to strangle her newborn baby was yesterday sentenced to life in prison.
JF, a Filipina, had claimed she was using the item of clothing to clean blood off the baby's neck when she passed out after giving birth last March, pulling the underwear tight and unintentionally strangling her child.
But a forensics report said doctors had to use scissors to cut off the knot in the garment because it was so tight, so it was unlikely it could have happened by mistake.
The mother checked into a hospital after the death and her sponsors were informed.
When asked where her baby was, she said she had left it in a rubbish bin. But her sponsor found the baby's body inside a plastic bag in her wardrobe.
"I put him there so I could take him with me to the Philippines to show him to his father," the mother had told the Abu Dhabi Criminal Court.
Police said the woman had confessed the baby was the result of a relationship outside of marriage, but in court she insisted she was made pregnant by her husband in the Philippines.
She said she had been home in July last year.
