Baby death mum to appeal against custody

A British mother accused of suffocating her newborn baby in a Crete hotel room will appeal against a court decision to hold her in custody until her trial.

Leah Andrew, from Hither Green, south east London, is back in prison after collapsing after a magistrate remanded her in custody.

The 20-year-old, who has two other children, fell ill at the end of a six-hour hearing in Heraklion, Crete's capital, and was taken to hospital.

A magistrate ordered her to be detained in custody until the trial, which is not likely to take place for at least another year.

Andrew was charged with murder after allegedly killing her baby moments after giving birth in a Malia hotel room in the early hours of Monday morning.

Lawyer Zoe Lama said her client was released from hospital and taken to Neapolis prison, east of the capital.

She said Andrew was mentally "not good" and had been asking to see her dead child.

Ms Lama said: "She has the right to appeal so that custody is replaced by other restrictions. We are thinking about what our next actions will be. We don't want her to be in prison until the trial."

She said they would appeal in the coming days when they had decided exactly what to do, with another hearing likely to take place next week.

Ms Lama said during the hearing that her client denied murder and denied the facts presented by the prosecution.

"She denied the allegation by saying that she believed that the child was dead when it was born and that she took some measures to help the child," said Ms Lama

"She did not intend to harm the baby. There was no movement and crying from the child when she gave birth to it. She did not do anything to cause its death."

Ms Lama said the murder charge would "definitely" be changed to infanticide by the time of the trial.

Murder can carry a life sentence but the maximum sentence for infanticide is 20 years.

© Independent Television News Limited 2008. All rights reserved.

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