Student nurse Safia Ahmaedia says she is “shattered” after enduring six months in prison and an 11-day trial where she was accused of attempting to kidnap a baby. She was recently acquitted.
The nurse, originally from Afghanistan, was working at England’s New Cross Hospital in Wolverhampton when an encounter between her and a new mother raised suspicions. Prosecutors accused her of “scouting” the hospital grounds in search of a newborn baby that she could kidnap a child and pass it off as her own.
Ahmaedi has been in England since she emigrated from Afghanistan in 2011. She started training as a nurse in 2022 at the University of Wolverhampton. During her second year of training, Ahmaedi encountered a woman at the hospital who had just given birth and was concerned about her baby being placed in a bed near an air conditioner.
The nurse in training struck up a conversation with the woman and they figured out that they had friends in common. Ahmaedi said she offered understanding to another woman who was alone and without family in a foreign country. Concerned about the baby, Ahmaedi said she went back to her car and retrieved a blanket that she gave to the woman.
That day, a staff member told her that she should not wear her uniform while not on duty, so Ahmaedi went back to her car to get some overalls to cover her uniform. She then took the blanket back to the maternity ward.
The next day, said the nurse, the university called her and said she’d been kicked out of the program. “I was wondering what I had done wrong,” Ahmaedi said.
Even though she was told not to come to the hospital, she returned the next day with baby clothes as an “apology gift,” Ahmeadi said, worrying that she had offended the woman she had befriended the day before. When she showed up she was arrested and then spent six months in prison while she was awaiting trial. Ahmaedi said she was attacked by three other inmates, and that her reputation and peace of mind is now ruined.
The prosecution argued that the nurse’s changes of clothes and gift-buying, plus her repeated visits to the new mother, indicated she planned to kidnap the child. Her motive? Ahmaedi had apparently lied to her second husband, telling him falsely that she was pregnant with twins. The student nurse admitted she had been dishonest with her husband, but maintained she had no intention of abducting another woman’s child.
The jury deliberated for only 48 minutes before acquitting Ahmaedi.
