Crime commissioner said cause of death was being investigated under strict confidentiality

This article is more than 7 months old

This article is more than 7 months old

A British woman suspected of murdering her two-year-old son has died in hospital after she was arrested and detained in Finland.

The 35-year-old was held in January after a child died in a two-bed apartment in the Suurpelto area of Espoo, Finland’s second biggest city.

The mother, named as Ayesha Ali by the Sunday Mirror, was being held in Vantaa prison near Helsinki. She was taken to hospital on Tuesday last week.

Crime commissioner Petri Eronen said in a statement: “The cause of death is being investigated under a strict duty of confidentiality. Therefore, we cannot reveal more details. On a general level, we can say that the police are investigating what led to the suspect’s death.”

In a previous statement, police said the mother had confessed to the killing and a trial date had been set for 17 April atLänsi-Uusimaa district court.

Ali, from Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire, taught English as a second language at a training company in Helsinki, according to her LinkedIn profile. Prior to this role, she worked as an English teacher for international students at Keele University in the UK.

In 2011, she married her husband, a Canadian and Algerian citizen, in Canada, court documents show. They lived in the UK, Finland and China together before returning to Finland in January 2019.

However, the couple applied for a divorce last year, which came into effect earlier this month, and had disagreed over custody arrangements, the documents said.

Additional reporting by Reetta Vaahtoranta