Sara Ege, who claimed the devil urged her to beat the seven-year-old, told she will serve at least 17 years in prison

A mother who beat her seven-year-old son to death for failing to learn the Qur'an by heart and burned his body in an attempt to hide her crime has been jailed for life.

Sara Ege, 33, collapsed and had to be helped sobbing from the dock after being told she would serve 17 years before she could be considered for parole.

Ege treated her son Yaseen "like a dog" when he struggled to memorise passages of the holy book of Islam, Cardiff crown court heard. Over three months, she beat him until he collapsed on the floor of his bedroom — still mumbling verses — and died.

Ege used barbecue lighting gel to set fire to the boy's body. Initially, emergency services believed he had been killed in a blaze at the family home in the Welsh capital. But a postmortem revealed he had died before the fire started and had suffered multiple injuries to his body including broken ribs, a fractured arm and a fractured finger.

A serious case review, published after Ege was jailed, revealed that staff at Yaseen's school had been concerned on "one or two occasions" about the boy but their worries had not been passed on to children's services or police.

Several agencies and individuals worked with Ege but the serious case review said there was "no co-ordinated plan" and the extent of her "social and cultural isolation" – and the possibility that Yaseen might be at risk – were not realised or understood.

It highlighted that agencies had been made aware on two occasions of allegations that Yaseen had suffered domestic abuse. On the first occasion, the allegations were not passed on to the police; on the second, Ege declined offers of intervention.

In court, the jury heard that Ege, a mathematics graduate who had entered competitions as a girl to demonstrate her own knowledge of the Qur'an, had struggled to have a child. Before Yaseen was born, she suffered depression as a result of a series of miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies. After his birth, she had postnatal depression. The court also heard that she had difficult relationships with her husband, taxi driver Yousef Ege, 38, and her mother-in-law.

Despite all her problems, Ege was thought of as a good and loving mother who had done all she could to bring her son up well.

It began to go wrong when Ege and her husband enrolled Yaseen in advanced classes at a mosque because they wanted him to become Hafiz – someone who memorises the Qur'an – hoping such status would bring honour to the family and improve their standing in the community.

He was given a three-month trial period at the mosque and told by his mother that he would have a new bicycle if he did well.

But Ege was not happy with the boy's progress and would hit him with a stick, a hammer, a rolling pin and a slipper as well as repeatedly punching him.

On the day of his death in July 2010, Yaseen was kept off school so that he could continue to try to learn his verses.

In a confession to police following her arrest, Ege said the boy collapsed after she had beaten him. Ege said: "He was breathing as if he was asleep when I left him. He was still murmuring the same thing over and over again."

When she went back to him, he was shaking and shivering. She did not seek medical help and the boy died. The woman then used barbecue gel to set fire to his body.

Ege told police she was "getting angry too much", adding: "I would shout at Yaseen all the time. I was getting very wild and I hit Yaseen with a stick on his back like a dog." She claimed she had been urged on by the devil and believed the stick she used to punish her son was possessed by an evil spirit.

She also told her GP she had been ordered to kill Yaseen by the devil and felt "100% better after the boy died". Notes kept by her doctor record her saying: "It is like something has been released. For three or four months, I have not been normal. Voices told me to hit Yaseen and then hit him more and more."

Ege later retracted her account to South Wales police of what had happened and accused her husband, who stood trial with her, of being a violent bully and the real killer. Yousef Ege was cleared of causing or allowing his son's death by failing to act to prevent it.

Sentencing Sara Ege for murder and perverting the course of justice, Mr Justice Wyn Williams said "in many respects" Ege had been "a very good mother" but concluded that Yaseen was subjected to "prolonged cruelty" and the violence "was not confined to the day of his death".