KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 25 — The eldest son of a Malaysian couple charged in Sweden with hitting their children feels that his parents will be sent to jail.

In video testimony shown yesterday, the 12-year-old boy acknowledged that his parents were already under detention but could now be sent to “real jail”.

“They’re going to go to jail - I don’t know for days or months - but I feel they’re going to a real jail. When they’re released, I can see them again,” the son of Shalwati Norshal and Azizul Raheem Awaluddi was quoted saying by local daily The Star.

In the fifth video interview recorded before the trial in the Solna district court in Sweden, the boy also said he longed to hug his parents.

The boy, who had previously testified in another video that he was hit over 1,000 times, said in yesterday’s recording that his mother seldom caned him, saying that it could be twice a month.

He also spoke of an occasion when his father had beat him after finding out that he had took his mother’s credit card to purchase a video game.

He said the incident stayed in his mind as he felt his father - whom he described as being the “angriest I had ever seen” over the credit card theft - found money to be more important.

Last Thursday, the boy told a policewoman that he did not know hitting children was unlawful there.

He said he would not have reported the alleged abuse if he had known it would lead their prosecution.

The couple’s four children, who were brought back to Malaysia last month, are now with their aunt in Kelantan.

The 10-day trial, which is set to run until March 10, resumes today.

Secondary school teacher Shalwati and Azizul, who is a Tourism Malaysia officer based in Stockholm, are charged with multiple counts of gross violation of their children’s integrity and assault.

Shalwati and Azizul are accused of hitting their four children - aged between seven and 14 years - at their home in Stockholm between September 15, 2010, and December 17, 2013.

They face between six months and six years’ jail for each charge.

The couple was detained on December 18 last year after being accused of beating their children for not praying.

Sweden, in 1979, was the first country in the world to outlaw corporal punishment.