Egypt: Mother, 3 others charged for fatal female circumcision of teenager

Four people have been charged for the death of a teenage girl in May after a female circumcision operation in a private hospital in Suez province in northeast Egypt.

Mayar Mohamed Moussa, the 17-year-old girl died after the operation, but her twin sister who was also cut survived, Egyptian local media, The Cairo Post reports.

The girl’s mother, who is also a nurse, the doctor who performed the operation, an anaesthetist and an administrator at the private hospital will be tried for manslaughter and causing injury resulting in death, an official from Suez told AFP.

The mother is however the only accused person under detention as the others are on the run, the official added.

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), which is the deliberate mutilation of female genitalia often by the removal or cutting of the labia and clitoris, was banned in Egypt since 2008 but is widely practiced in the country.

Perpetrators of the crime, if found guilty, will face between three months and two years in prison.

The NGO, Equality Now, an international women rights organization based in New York, welcomed the announcement of the trial, hoping that the fugitive doctor will be arrested.

“Egypt must adopt a policy of zero tolerance to prevent female circumcision, and that requires swift action against those who practice these operations,” Suad Abu-Dayyeh, a consultant for Equality Now in the Middle East and North Africa said.

In January 2015, an Egyptian doctor was sentenced to two years and three months in prison for practicing a fatal female circumcision on a teenager, the first verdict of its kind since the 2008 ban. But in November 2015, it turned out that he was still at large.

According to a study by the Egyptian Government Demographics Office in 2000, FGM affects 96.6% of Egyptian women, both Muslim and Christian between the ages of 15 to 49 years.

The practice in Egypt has been a tradition from the time of the Pharaohs intended to “cleanse women from sexual temptation.”