A mother who “lost her temper” and killed her three-month-old daughter has been jailed for nine-and-a-half years.

Nazli Merthoca gave birth to Kaylani Kalanzi prematurely, and the newborn had to spend 29 days in hospital before she was allowed home on May 13 2024.

But the infant was on social services’ radar before she was even born, and had been placed on a child protection plan, the Old Bailey was told.

Prosecutor Zoe Johnson KC told jurors that Merthoca was in a “mutually abusive relationship” with the child’s father, Herbert Kalanzi.

Before they could take custody of the child, the parents had to demonstrate they were fit parents, with Mr Kalanzi agreeing to attend a fatherhood programme.

But Ms Johnson said social services’ strategy was “doomed to fail” and the “ever-present risk” to Kaylani became a “fatal reality” on 8 July 2024.

The couple called emergency services shortly before 10.30pm, saying Kaylani had stopped breathing, and requesting help at Merthoca’s grandmother’s flat in Homerton, east London, where they were staying at the time.

When paramedics arrived, Merthoca failed to inform them that Kaylani had been violently shaken, causing bleeding to the brain, damage to her eyes and fractures to her tibia and ribs, the court was told.

Admitted with catastrophic brain injuries, as well as a broken leg and ribs, Kaylani died in hospital 15 days later.

Merthoca became upset at being questioned about what happened, and claimed she was being blamed because of her “race and gender”, according to staff at Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Ms Johnson said Merthoca had “lost her temper with the baby after an accumulation of factors” and also “challenged” social workers instead of accepting their help.

Benjamin Aina KC, defending, told the court that his client had faced “a number of significant challenges” in her life.

These included suffering physical abuse as a child and entering the care system when she was 12, where she started being “groomed by older men” and relying on cannabis and alcohol.

He also told of her “grief” over Kaylani.

Merthoca was tried over her daughter’s death in October, and a jury cleared her of murder but found her guilty of manslaughter.

Jailing her for nine years and six months on Monday, Judge Mark Lucraft KC called the death of the baby a “loss of a precious life”.

“The impact of the death of Kaylani will be felt by many,” he told Merthoca.

“You will have to live with the knowledge that you killed your daughter.”

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Mr Kalanzi had also been on trial, accused of causing or allowing Kaylani’s death, but was cleared by jurors.

He had been formally acquitted of her murder on the directions of the judge.

The defendants, from East Ham, east London, did not give evidence at their trial.

The whole of the UK – not just its armed forces – needs to step up to deter the threat posed by Russia of a wider war in Europe, Britain’s military chief will say.

In the kind of nation-wide call to action that has not been heard since the height of the Cold War, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton will use a speech in London on Monday evening to urge the British public to make defence and resilience “a higher priority”.

He will say Russia’s war in Ukraine shows that Vladimir Putin’s willingness to target his neighbours “threatens the whole of NATO, including the UK. The Russian leadership has made clear that it wishes to challenge, limit, divide and ultimately destroy NATO”.

Yet there was nothing in excerpts of the speech – released in advance by the Ministry of Defence – that pointed to any push by Sir Keir Starmer’s government to increase defence spending faster than planned, despite the flashing warning signs and concerns among senior military officers that the budget is currently set to grow too slowly.

In a further articulation of the threat, Blaise Metreweli, the new head of MI6, will use a separate speech on Monday to warn that the “front line is everywhere” in a new “age of uncertainty”.

“The export of chaos is a feature not a bug in the Russian approach to international engagement,” she will say, in her first public comments since becoming the first female chief of the Secret Intelligence Service in October.

“We should be ready for this to continue until Putin is forced to change his calculus.”

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Defence and security chiefs across the NATO alliance are increasingly sounding the alarm about the potential for Russia’s war in Ukraine to ignite a much wider conflict.

Mark Rutte, the head of NATO, last week said Europe must ready itself for a confrontation with Russia on the kind of scale “our grandparents and great-grandparents endured” – a reference to the First and Second World Wars.

At the same time, Al Carns, the UK’s armed forces minister, said Britain is “rapidly developing” plans to ready the entire country for the possible outbreak of war.

Sky News revealed last year that the UK had no national plan for the defence of the country or the mobilisation of its people.

By contrast, a detailed blueprint for the transition from a state of peace to one of war existed throughout the Cold War, setting out not just what the armed forces, emergency services and local governments had to do in the event of conflict, but also wider society, including people working in industry, schools and public transport.

However, this Government War Book was quietly shelved after the Soviet Union collapsed and successive governments took a so-called “peace dividend”, shifting investment out of defence and into other priorities such as health and welfare.

Sky News and Tortoise have documented the hollowing out of the UK’s armed forces and wider national resilience in a podcast series called The Wargame.

The expected comments by Air Chief Marshal Knighton in an annual lecture at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) appear to signal an attempt by the government to put the country back on more of a war footing in the face of rising threats.

But military insiders have warned that a timeline set out by the government of 10 years to boost defence spending to 3.5% of GDP from 2.3% is far too slow.

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The chief of the defence staff will say: “The situation is more dangerous than I have known during my career and the response requires more than simply strengthening our armed forces. A new era for defence doesn’t just mean our military and government stepping up – as we are – it means our whole nation stepping up.”

He will nod to the planned uplift in spending, noting “the price of peace is increasing”.

He is set to say: “The war in Ukraine shows that Putin’s willingness to target neighbouring states, including their civilian populations, potentially with such novel and destructive weapons, threatens the whole of NATO, including the UK.”

This is a threat that wider society needs to prepare for as well as the military.

“Our armed forces always need to be ready to fight and win – that’s why readiness is such a priority,” Air Chief Marshal Knighton will say.

“But deterrence is also about our resilience to these threats, it’s about how we harness all our national power, from universities, to industry, the rail network to the NHS. It’s about our defence and resilience being a higher national priority for all of us. An ‘all-in’ mentality.”

It is a highly unusual intervention that has echoes of the Cold War when the UK last involved all of society in a programme of national defence and resilience against the threat of World War Three and potential nuclear Armageddon posed by the then Soviet Union.

“We are heading into uncertainty, and that uncertainty is becoming more profound, both as our adversaries become more capable and unpredictable, and as unprecedented technology change manifests itself,” Air Chief Marshal Knighton will say.

Specialist investigation teams for rape and sexual offences are to be created across England and Wales as the Home Secretary declares violence against women and girls a “national emergency”.

Shabana Mahmood said the dedicated units will be in place across every force by 2029 as part of Labour’s violence against women and girls (VAWG) strategy due to be launched later this week.

The use of Domestic Abuse Protection Orders (DAPOs), which had been trialled in several areas, will also be rolled out across England and Wales. They are designed to target abusers by imposing curfews, electronic tags and exclusion zones.

The orders cover all forms of domestic abuse, including economic abuse, coercive and controlling behaviour, stalking and ‘honour’-based abuse. Breaching the terms can carry a prison term of up to 5 years.

Nearly £2m will also be spent funding a network of officers to target offenders operating within the online space.

Teams will use covert and intelligence techniques to tackle violence against women and girls via apps and websites.

A similar undercover network funded by the Home Office to examine child sexual abuse has arrested over 1,700 perpetrators.

Abuse is ‘national emergency’

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said in a statement: “This government has declared violence against women and girls a national emergency.

“For too long, these crimes have been considered a fact of life. That’s not good enough. We will halve it in a decade.

“Today we announce a range of measures to bear down on abusers, stopping them in their tracks. Rapists, sex offenders and abusers will have nowhere to hide.”

The target to halve violence against women and girls in a decade is a Labour manifesto pledge.

The government said the measures build on existing policy, including facial recognition technology to identify offenders, improving protections for stalking victims, making strangulation a criminal offence and establishing domestic abuse specialists in 999 control rooms.

Read more from Sky News:
Demands for violence and abuse reforms
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Labour has ‘failed women’

But the Conservatives said Labour had “failed women” and “broken its promises” by delaying the publication of the violence against women and girls strategy.

Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Philp, said that Labour “shrinks from uncomfortable truths, voting against tougher sentences and presiding over falling sex-offender convictions. At every turn, Labour has failed women.”