'I was the best father in the world'

MAN ACCUSED OF KILLING HIS BABY SON TELLS COURT HE 'WOULD NEVER HARM HIM'

- By ADAM EVERETT

A MAN accused of murdering his baby son has described himself as “the best dad in the world”.

Klevi Pirjani and his wife, Nivalda Santos Pirjani, are on trial at Liverpool Crown Court charged with the murder of their infant child, Miguel Pirjani, who died aged 13 weeks in November last year.

The couple are accused of “systematically abusing” their baby before his death, after he was found to have suffered numerous broken bones and a bleed on the brain. Both deny this charge, although the mum has admitted a count of causing or allowing the death of a child.

Klevi Pirjani gave his evidence to the court yesterday.

Under questioning from his new counsel, Sarah Vine KC, after his previous legal team withdrew from the case, he told the jury that he moved to the UK with his family from his native Albania in 2006, via spells living in Italy and Germany.

Wearing a grey jumper in the witness box and sporting short dark hair, Pirjani appeared to become emotional as he was asked what his sister's name was, saying: “My sister died a long time ago. I was around eight years old.

“My dad died. It was war, 1996. It was the Balkan War. There was people killed every day, children. It was no life for me as a child. After my dad was killed, six months after my dad, my sister died as well.”

Pirjani said that he later met Nivalda at a party “around the end of 2013” while he was living in Birmingham, before he later moved to Liverpool to live with his partner. He said of their relationship: “It was a very good relationship, very strong. All the time, I was in work. Nivalda was working. It was very good.”

However, Pirjani reported that Nivalda’s “behaviour became a bit strange” and that she “didn’t want him to speak to” their neighbours, whom he was “very close” with.