Pictures of a woman who lost an eye and was left with 5% brain capacity after a man crept into her luxury hotel room and bludgeoned her with a hammer have been released for the first time.

Ohoud al Najjar was staying with her two sisters at the Cumberland Hotel in Marble Arch, London, when Philip Spence launched his attack in April 2014.

All three women suffered devastating injuries, with Ohoud left unable to speak and feel pain.

One sibling, Fatima, lost her sense of taste and smell and developed memory problems, while the other, Khulood, has had 20 operations to rebuild her head and face.

Five years on, the family has decided to sue hotel owner GLH for allegedly having inadequate levels of security.

Spence – who was jailed for 27 years for three counts of attempted murder – was able to walk into the lobby and make his way up to the seventh floor where they were staying.

The room door had been left unlocked as the family believed they were safe, and their attacker – who had a history of sneaking into hotel rooms to steal – was able to get in easily.

According to GLH, the door had also been left ajar, visible from the corridor.

Khulood recalled: “I was asleep but awoke when I heard footsteps. I opened my eyes to see somebody at the table looking through our stuff. I started to call out to my sister in the connecting room and the man came and put his face really close to mine, he was literally in front of my nose.

“He said ‘give me the f****** money’ and I felt a really hot liquid on my neck. I didn’t feel any pain at all, maybe it was the shock as he had hit me over the head with a hammer.”

She said she was still “haunted” by what she saw in the moments leading up to the brutal attack, which left her daughter crying “mama, mama, mama” and her brother “shouting at me that I was dying”.

Khulood added: “My children were traumatised by what they saw.

“I lost seeing part of their childhood and haven’t had a chance to be a real mum for five years. I used to do everything for them but I haven’t been able to since the attack.

“They still have nightmares and are always worried that we are going to be hurt by another bad man. They are scared to go anywhere and wanted to put cameras all over our house in case somebody came to kill us.”

Fatima said she was shocked that Spence had been able to get up to the seventh floor – and that the family had grown accustomed to hotels being a “safe place” in their homeland of Abu Dhabi.

She said she had been left unable to sleep “for more than one hour at a time” since the attack and remains in “physical and mental pain”.

Ohoud was so badly injured that she is unable to express herself to show if she is hurting, and is is said to have no quality of life.

GLH has refuted that it was in any way responsible and will fight a civil trial due to take place next month.

A spokesman said: “Notwithstanding our sincere sympathies, the hotel cannot accept liability given the facts surrounding this dreadful incident, which include these guests having left their hotel bedroom door ajar, visible from the corridor, whilst the family was asleep inside.

“The sad truth is that the innocuous-looking Spence would not have been able to enter the room opportunistically, had the self-locking mechanism of the room’s door not been propped open.

“It was an appalling incident, made all the more shocking by its unwarranted brutality for which Spence rightly has a long sentence to serve.

“The al Najjar family suffered an unimaginable ordeal at the hands of a stranger who, with our full support and the aid of the hotel’s CCTV, was swiftly apprehended, tried and convicted.

“Spence’s unconscionable actions have affected all those who sought to help the al Najjar family that night.”

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