Two inmates charged with attempted murder of child killer Urfan Sharif inside HMP Belmarsh
The Crown Prosecution Service has formally authorized attempted murder charges against two high-security prisoners following a violent retaliatory assault on convicted child killer Urfan Sharif inside London’s HMP Belmarsh. Forty-seven-year-old Steven Sansom and thirty-nine-year-old Adam Watson stand indicted for orchestrating a coordinated prison cell ambush targeting the notorious offender on New Year’s Day. Both defendants have been remanded to appear before Westminster Magistrates’ Court to face formal arraignment proceedings.
The targeted victim, forty-three-year-old Urfan Sharif, is currently serving a mandatory whole-life sentence with a forty-year minimum tariff for the high-profile torture and murder of his ten-year-old daughter, Sara Sharif. Judicial proceedings at the Old Bailey in late 2024 revealed that the young girl endured months of systematic physical abuse, extensive skeletal fractures, and severe internal trauma before her body was discovered at the family residence in Woking, Surrey. The horrifying nature of the domestic homicide sparked widespread national outrage and marked Sharif as an immediate high-priority target within Britain’s maximum-security penal network.
According to preliminary investigative filings, the violent altercation took place within Sharif’s fortified cell block during morning movement routines on January 1, 2025. Correctional intelligence logs indicate that the assailants breached the cell compartment wielding an improvised slashing weapon fashioned from the razor-sharp, jagged lid of a metal tuna tin. The attackers reportedly targeted Sharif’s vital areas, inflicting deep lacerations and blunt-force puncture wounds across his neck, jawline, and facial tissues before on-duty custodial intervention units could force their way inside.
Specialist tactical officers and prison medical staff deployed emergency containment protocols, restraining the two attackers and administering rapid trauma care directly on the cell floor. The Metropolitan Police subsequently confirmed that while the forty-three-year-old inmate sustained substantial facial and cervical slash trauma requiring urgent surgical suturing, his injuries were ultimately classified as non-life-threatening. Sharif was treated under armed guard in the prison’s secure healthcare facility before being returned to fortified segregation.
The Crown Prosecution Service reviewed extensive physical evidence, forensic blood splatter analysis, and internal facility CCTV footage before formally lodging the attempted murder indictments against Sansom and Watson. Judicial authorities issued formal directives reminding the public and media outlets that criminal proceedings against both defendants are active and subject to strict reporting restrictions. The statutory advisory emphasizes that the accused retain full rights to an impartial and fair trial under British law.
The incident highlights the continuous, severe security challenges confronting correctional governors tasked with housing universally reviled domestic abusers alongside volatile, high-category offenders. Despite strict protective separation protocols and elevated surveillance regimes inside HMP Belmarsh, improvised weapon manufacturing and retaliatory vigilante attacks remain persistent operational threats across close-supervision tiers. Correctional officers’ associations have frequently noted that managing the daily survival of notorious child killers places immense strain on frontline institutional resources.
Sharif’s co-defendants from the original murder trial also remain incarcerated under lengthy custodial sentences across separate high-security facilities. The child’s stepmother, Beinash Batool, is serving a minimum term of thirty-three years following her murder conviction, while her uncle, Faisal Malik, received a sixteen-year sentence for causing or allowing the death of a vulnerable child. As Sansom and Watson prepare to face magistrate judges in Westminster, the violent Belmarsh ambush underscores the brutal, unforgiving prison hierarchy confronting perpetrators of extreme child abuse.
