Julian Bonnici

The Moroccan woman, who was the victim of a horrific attack last Sunday afternoon when four men performed a forced abortion on her, has recounted her harrowing experience to The Malta Independent on Sunday. Her horrific ordeal saw her not only lose her child but also left for dead after suffering multiple stab wounds.

She began by telling the newsroom that she started dating the man, a Libyan national by the name of Ashraf Ammar Marghami, nine months ago. About a month-and-a-half prior to the attack, she told him she was pregnant.

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“Everything was going well and he was ecstatic when he found out about the pregnancy. He spoke to me about marriage and we even signed a contract for the rental of a property,” she told this newspaper yesterday.

On the day of the attack, she said, the couple even went shopping for maternity and baby clothes.

Through tears, the woman said, “He could have just told me that he did not want to have anything to do with the baby and me, but 30 minutes before he did what he did, he was acting so happy and took me out shopping.”

Recounting the horrific details, the woman bravely told this newsroom that after shopping, the couple returned to his residence in Swieqi at roughly 5pm. As they were lying on the bed, three men, all masked, stormed in.

She said she was able to identify two of the men (pictured Right: The victim’s former boyfriend Ashraf Ammar Marghami and two of the masked attackers Imad (left) and Tarek (right),) from their voices, as they were friends of her former partner and had spent time together. Their names are Tarek and Imad (surnames unknown), and both are Libyan nationals. The woman did admit that their names might be fake, as one of them already holds multiple Swedish Identity Cards with different names.

The woman said she does not know the identity of the fourth man.

Showing the bruises around her left eye where she was hit and arms where she was bound, she described how they physically forced her onto the bed and bound her hands in front of her torso.

“They put the music on full volume so no one would hear what was happening. I remember them saying that it was the weekend so no one would think anything of it.”

Tarek and Imad, she claimed, were told to stand guard outside the door while her partner and the other masked man remained in the room.

The man who remained in the room and whose identity is unknown seemed to have some knowledge of conducting such a procedure.

“They forced pills down my throat at knifepoint. They made me swallow them and then injected something in my arm.”

Her boyfriend and the self-styled doctor then proceeded to bind her hands behind her back.

“They gagged my mouth, and then the man forced my legs open and started putting medicine inside me.

“I heard him tell my boyfriend to kick me in the stomach so that the baby would come out.”

The man then started kicking the woman in her abdomen.

“Every time I tried to move,” she recounted, "they stabbed me. I remember actually seeing him thrust the knife into my arm and taking it out."

According to hospital records, the men inflicted a total of nine stab wounds – three along her left arm, and six along her left thigh.

The woman said that she then lost consciousness.

Recounting the events that followed, she explains that her 15-year-old daughter and her boyfriend discovered her between 10:30 and 11pm, a full five hours after the attack began.

The daughter, who had been looking for her missing mother, was told by a friend that loud music was coming from the residence of her mother’s partner. After knocking down the door, the young couple were confronted with a macabre scene.

“She found me naked, bound and gagged in the bathroom,” she said.

"The doctors told me that when I arrived to hospital I had practically no heart beat. I was five minutes away from death.

“They just left me there to die after already killing my baby."

The police, she said, found the bedroom clean of any blood with only a knife, a syringe, and a pill left.

“I remember them arguing over one of them losing a pill” she recalled.

The woman suspects that the attack had been premeditated for a co,uple of weeks, especially considering that the medication the men used cannot be acquired in Malta.

The woman also told this newsroom that following her attack, another two women came forward and told her that her former partner had performed the same forced abortion on them.

She said that one of the women, who is married, is too afraid to speak up. The other was a 21-year-old student.

The four men have reportedly fled the island.

The woman said she has been informed that the four are currently in Stockholm, Sweden after boarding a train following a flight to Poland. The information has already been given to the police.

“How can they kill my baby, and travel through Europe so freely?” she asked incredulously.

The men’s ability to travel freely throughout Europe raises questions surrounding the Schengen Agreement. In spite of numerous assurances from politicians, wanted criminals are still able to travel through internal European boarders with little to no security.

Ashraf Ammar Marghami, according to the woman, first entered Malta using a fake passport in 2006 but eventually acquired refugee status.

Two of the men have criminal records in Sweden and are currently avoiding prison sentences on drug-related charges, the woman claims.

Imad, she says, is on the run from a 10-year prison sentence imposed by the Swedish courts; and Tarek from a one-year sentence in Sweden.

The partner, according to the woman, is still using his Facebook account and his Vodafone Malta SIM card, but the police have told her that there is little they can do with that information.

It seems puzzling that with the technology available, not only in Malta but also through the police data-sharing enshrined in the same Schengen Agreement, the attackers can travel around so freely and that the relevant authorities are unable to track down the men and bring them before a court of law.

“All I want is for the men to be brought to justice, not only for killing my baby or the other attacks my ex did, but to protect anyone from this happening again,” she said.

Anyone with any information on the exact whereabouts of the men, as shown in the pictures, is asked to please contact the relevant authorities in Malta or in Sweden. They can also contact this newspaper in complete confidentiality and we will pass the information on to the authorities concerned.