Jail for woman who killed unborn twins

A woman who killed her unborn twins after injecting herself with drugs to induce their birth was finally jailed today after going on the run.

Faiso Sahil's babies were to be taken into care after they were born so, to avoid social services, she decided she would make them arrive three weeks earlier than their due date.

Sahil, who trained as a midwife in her native Somalia, was taken into hospital on April 8 2007 after complaining of severe pain in her abdomen.

She asked to be induced several times, and claimed she was having contractions, but midwives and doctors told her they could see no signs of labour and that the twins were developing healthily.

She was discharged two days later but re-admitted the same day.

She found bottles of the drug Syntometrine in a trolley in her hospital delivery suite and injected them into a cannula in her left hand in the early hours of April 11 2007.

Sahil, who was 37 weeks pregnant, thought the drug would induce her labour, as a similar drug was used in Somalia and in the UK for this purpose.

But her twins, a boy and girl, died within 20 to 60 minutes of the injection, which caused the blood supply to her placenta to be restricted, thereby cutting off the oxygen to her babies.

She then told consultant Simon Grant that her midwife Caroline Randall had given her the drugs during the night before the twins died, leading to Mrs Randall's arrest and suspension.

In May this year Sahil, 35, of Ullswater Road, Southmead, was found guilty in her absence of perverting the course of justice and sentenced to 14 months in prison.

She was also sentenced to three and a half years after previously admitting child cruelty, for which she was being investigated during her pregnancy.

The two sentences are to run consecutively.

Sahil fled, first to Finland, before being arrested in Sweden this week under a European Warrant of Arrest.

She was returned to the UK to hear her fate at Bristol Crown Court today.