After years of fighting to clear their names, the couple at the centre of Ireland's first and only FGM prosecution will have their bid for a certificate of miscarriage of justice heard next January. But how did their case reach this point?
On 16 September 2016, a young couple brought their 21-month-old daughter to CHI Crumlin after she suffered an injury to her perineal region.
Originally from two countries in east Africa, the couple had been living in Ireland for almost a decade.
They told hospital staff they thought their daughter had suffered the injury when she fell onto a toy.
But hospital staff rejected the couple's explanation. They felt it was a non-accidental injury (NAI) which appeared to be consistent with Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).
Once the hospital instigated the non-accidental injury protocol, the Child and Family Agency, Tusla and An Garda Síochána became involved.
This simple act of parental care — bringing their child to hospital — would irrevocably alter their lives, setting in motion a series of historic firsts for the Irish State and leaving many questions in its wake.
The couple was quickly arrested and put on trial in 2019, where a jury found them both guilty. The man was sentenced to five and a half years' imprisonment and the woman to four years and nine months.
It was the first trial of its kind in Ireland.
That might sound like the end of the story, particularly considering a UK FGM expert agreed with the authorities and three Irish treating doctors that FGM had taken place.
But the parents' guilty verdict was only the beginning.
In 2024, a producer from RTÉ Documentary on One stumbled across a story online.
It was about the same two parents found guilty of FGM, whose convictions the court subsequently ruled "unsafe and unsatisfactory" on appeal, and who the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) had finally decided to drop their charges against.
They entered a nolle prosequi in July 2024 effectively meaning the DPP were no longer pursuing the prosecution.
The decision to set aside the conviction marked another first for the Irish courts. It was the first time that translation issues were grounds for a successful Circuit Court appeal.
But it left questions unanswered: How did such a major error occur in such a serious court case? And what happens when you say the crimes you're charged with never took place?
In order to get to the bottom of what really happened in this case, RTÉ Documentary on One and RTÉ Investigates have come together to produce First Conviction, a new six-part podcast series, which began publishing this week and releases weekly followed by a television documentary which airs on 12 November.
The family
For the last year, we've been meeting and interviewing the couple at the centre of this story.
What we found was a loving couple seemingly devoted to their children.
"We thought maybe there might be blood inside. She’s a child. She can't say if it is painful. It could be very dangerous," the father explained of the decision to take his daughter to hospital back in September 2016.
"We cannot keep her at home. We can't see the injury."
In fact, he said that hospital staff originally told him there was nothing wrong with his daughter and he could take her home.
However, he was concerned that something could be wrong internally.
Ultimately it was decided that a medical procedure, cauterization, could be used to stop the bleeding.
First Conviction marks the first time Sayeed and his wife Halawa, whose names have been changed to protect the anonymity of their children, have spoken publicly about what happened to their family.
For the purposes of both the podcast and the television documentary, their injured daughter will be referred to as Ayeesha.
Narrated by Academy Award-nominated actor Ruth Negga, this RTÉ investigation will rewrite everything the public thinks they know about this case and raise questions about the functionality and ethics behind key parts of our legal system.
Nolle prosequi
After the couple were released from prison in 2021, there was a second trial in 2023, but this time the jury's decision was inconclusive.
A year later, in 2024, the DPP entered a nolle prosequi in respect of all charges, meaning that the State was no longer proceeding with the prosecution, but the couple had not been acquitted.
Now, they are seeking a certificate of a miscarriage of justice to clear their names and potentially lead to one of the biggest compensation payments in the history of the State.
Just yesterday, the couple were given a hearing date for their application.
In court 16 at the Criminal Courts of Justice, President of the Court of Appeal, Ms Justice Caroline Costello, told the couple's legal teams that she was allowing the requested two-day duration, for the Court of Criminal Appeal to hear their application for a certificate of Miscarriage of Justice.
The application is being made under section 9 of the Criminal Procedure Act 1993.
The hearing, from the 22 to 23 January 2026 will be before a panel of three judges in the Court of Appeal in court 16 in the Criminal Courts of Justice.
Read more: Miscarriage of justice sought after overturned conviction
Sayeed and Halawa, who now find themselves living in emergency accommodation with their children, had begun the process of seeking this certificate in January of this year.
If successful, it would show the couple had been needlessly separated from each other and their three children for more than two years, vilified in the media, and dragged through the courts for nothing. It could have a ripple effect across the entire Irish legal system.
It is important to note that throughout the course of this investigation, conviction, appeal and to the present day, the couple have always maintained their innocence.
During the original sentencing in January 2020, Judge Elma Sheahan sentenced Sayeed to five-and-a-half years' imprisonment and Halawa to four years and nine months.
Despite this result, the DPP made an application for an undue leniency appeal, arguing that the judge's sentence was too lenient and that the parents' sentences should be increased.
In sending this couple to prison, this case achieved what is believed to be yet another first in Irish history. It was the first time a married couple with children were simultaneously incarcerated.
Sayeed was sent to the Midlands Prison, in Portlaoise, and Halawa to the Dóchas Centre, in Dublin, in the height of the global Covid-19 pandemic, meaning 23-hour lockdown in a prison cell.
This despite being parents to three children, one of whom was still being breastfed.
Lost in translation
But how does a case of this magnitude unravel over a translation error? That is one of the big questions of this investigation.
As the story unfolds, multiple problems with translations emerge.
Experts tell us there were language interpretation issues from the very first interview Sayeed, whose native language is African French, gave to gardaí in Crumlin Garda station.
His interpreter did not know how to translate FGM.
But this first interview only marked the start of a series of ad-hoc, subpar translations that would ultimately derail this case for both the couple and the State.
Criminal Justice (Female Genital Mutilation) Bill 2011
In 2011, TD and now Labour Party leader Ivana Bacik introduced legislation to criminalise the practice of FGM, carrying a maximum sentence of 14 years.
This case was the first and to-date the last time the legislation was used.
For many, specific FGM legislation acts as a declaration of political will and showcases a government's commitment towards ending what is widely considered a barbaric practice.
But does this also create greater stigma around certain communities?
In Western society, some academics suggest a contradiction is emerging between a strong political desire to effectively enforce FGM legislation, as well as execute anti-discrimination legislation which aims to prevent the stigmatisation of migrants.
John Stauffer is a human rights lawyer who works as Legal Director and Deputy Executive Director at the human rights organisation Civil Rights Defenders.
He has previously worked for the Swedish Equality Ombudsman during a well-known Swedish FGM case, the Uppsala case, that turned out to be unfounded, and the family in question won a case against the city.
In that instance, a child of Somali origin was planning a summer trip to Kenya with relatives. Social Welfare Service claimed it had been difficult to meet with the family, which gave rise to a suspicion that FGM was going to take place. When the girl returned from her trip, the police arrived at the child's school and brought her for a forced examination.
Mr Stauffer explains that while there may be a strong understanding of the obligation to report suspicion of a crime, there can be a lack of knowledge around the obligations attached to discrimination acts, both in society and within state institutions and social services.
"There is an obligation to report and with all these things, of course, it creates a strong will to do what you can to combat this practice, to address the problem, to work for the rights of the child, because that's, of course, behind this.
"It is caring about the child that drives this development and this will. And on the other hand, we have the need to ensure that people are not discriminated.
"What we're seeing in the work to combat FGM, for example, in the Uppsala case and in other similar cases, is that in trying to protect the rights of the child, it ends up that good ambition ends up violating the rights of the child, violating in this Uppsala case, violating the rights of that child not to be discriminated, violating that child's rights to physical and psychological integrity."
Swedish Anthropologist Sara Johnsdotter, who's been researching the area of FGM for several decades, adds that specific laws like those around FGM only apply to certain ethnic communities, resulting in these communities coming "under constant suspicion and with the assumptions that this is going on in hiding".
Listen to Episode One of First Conviction:
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230 million girls and women
FGM is practised in countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
According to a 2024 report on FGM by UNICEF, across the world, over 230 million girls and women have survived female genital mutilation.
Around four million girls are subjected to the practice every year, and it is estimated that every year, over two million girls are subjected to FGM before their fifth birthday.
It is also believed that one to two million women have been impacted by FGM in small practising communities and destination countries for migration across the rest of the world.
While there is ample data about the extent of the practice in the countries most affected by FGM, in places like Ireland, the precise number of cases remains unknown.
This is because data is not routinely collected in countries where the practice is limited to small communities or migrants whose numbers are difficult to pinpoint.
Over the course of this investigation by RTÉ, what became clear is that a lot of people who migrate to Ireland are happy to leave old traditions behind and start afresh, so they don't enforce what was done to them onto their daughters.
In fact, in many countries, there is a high level of opposition to FGM; in total, around 400 million people in practising countries in Africa and the Middle East say they want the practice to end, according to the UNICEF report.
But that doesn't negate the fact that the wider population might assume they’ve brought their traditions with them.
Listen to Episode 2 of First Conviction
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Ms Johnsdotter told RTÉ that even when people have lived in a European country for many years, there is still a perception that if they migrated from an FGM-practising country that they keep the tradition alive.
"There is widespread assumptions in the public discussions also among the police and prosecution, that illegal FGM activities are going on at a large scale. So, when the authority communities try hard to find illegal cases, and they don't, they assume that it's because it's so well hidden. But research doesn't support this view at all."
'We cannot stop them. They are State agencies'
Throughout the RTÉ podcast and television documentary, what is undeniable is the level of trauma felt by this family.
Once the Irish media got wind of this story, mere hours after Sayeed’s 2016 arrest, speculation about rituals, phrases like "barbaric butchery" and rumours that the gardaí were hunting a "witch doctor" hit the tabloids.
In other words, from the beginning, this case was plagued by ethnic stereotypes even before the parents reached their all white, all-Irish jury.
By early 2017, the family said they felt like they were being pushed away by their own community. While the media never named them directly, rumours soon spread about their identity.
Sayeed told the documentary team he felt that no one wanted to be associated with him because he was accused of an act of FGM against his daughter.
He said people were shocked, friends stopped calling, and that the couple were perceived as criminals due to the media reporting.
Tusla originally issued an order against the parents in 2016, due to the suspicion of FGM having taken place.
17 days after the couple first brought Ayeesha to the hospital, where she remained a patient, they were brought before the Dublin Family Court.
The parents struggled to understand how what they claim to be an act of care could amount to their children potentially being taken from them.
"You cannot imagine how you feel when your solicitor tells you they're going to take your children," said Halawa.
While for her husband, it felt like the system was turning against his family.
"We cannot stop them. They are State agencies. There are many things involved. Many doctors in the hospital. The gardaí, Tusla. All those institutions are saying one thing."
And that was that an act of FGM had been performed on their daughter.
Because this is not merely a story about FGM - it's about justice, the functionality of our legal system and identifying whether taxpayers' money is being spent in the right places.
The question this series will ask is how and why the system failed this family.
Alongside the RTÉ Documentary on One team, RTÉ Investigates has worked on this story for the past 12 months.
Part of what drew us to it was the fact that after the initial arrest and conviction of the couple, the story essentially fell completely out of the news cycle.
"There was so much more to it when we started looking and talking to people involved," said RTÉ Documentary on One producer, Tim Desmond.
"We were given access to the couple, based in part on the reputation we had as a storytelling team. When I first met the couple at the centre of this story, I was sceptical, but when we began interviewing them, we realised the story of what they went through was about more than the subject of FGM, it was about how the system can sometimes serve people in the wrong way."
He added: "We are obliged under the constitution, for instance, to ensure people get a fair trial before the courts. Stories where questions arise around the upholding of these rights are important and need to be told."
If you do have any knowledge or information on this story, please contact us immediately and in confidence at documentaries@rte.ie or investigations@rte.ie, or dm us on any of our social media channels.
First Conviction, a new six-part podcast series and TV doc from RTÉ Documentary On One and RTÉ Investigates, will publish weekly from 8 October 2025. The TV documentary will broadcast on 12 November on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player.
