This is a brief but satisfying follow-up to my diary First-ever criminal proceedings for gang rape in Egypt from last month. In that diary I reported that 13 men had been referred to trial by Egypt’s prosecution service ‘for alleged sex attacks on women at Cairo's Tahrir Square, including during inaugural celebrations for new President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’; they were charged with ‘kidnapping, raping, sexually attacking, attempting to murder and torturing the women’.
Reuters and The Globe and Mail now report that seven of the accused were sentenced to life imprisonment. In addition a 16-year-old defendent was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and a 19-year-old defendent was given two 20-year prison terms; it’s not clear whether they are concurrent or consecutive. The sentencing session was broadcast live on TV; the defendants, who according to Egyptian custom stood in cages, shouted ‘injustice’ when the verdicts were read, and their relatives attacked journalists.
The sentences can be appealed.
According to Mozn Hassan, director of Nazra for Feminist Studies, which provides legal representation for victims, ‘this is the first verdict in a case of sexual assault in the history of this country’. She said that there are another ten cases that have not yet gone to court because the severity of the victims’s injuries held up the investigations.
It’s a hopeful start, but there’s still a long way to go. From the Reuters article:
But rights campaigners have long said Egypt needs to take sexual harassment more seriously. One female television presenter on a private channel giggled when her colleague mentioned the harassment in Tahrir. The people were simply "happy", she said.
[...]
Sexual harassment, high rates of female genital cutting and a surge in violence after the Arab Spring uprisings have made Egypt the worst country in the Arab world to be a woman, a Thomson Reuters Foundation survey showed late last year.
From The Globe and Mail:
Ms. Hassan said the harsh sentences are not enough, though, to combat the widespread phenomenon. She wants the legal definition of rape expanded to include penetration with any body part or object without consent. The current law doesn’t define rape and refers to “indecent violation,” a vague term with a moral connotation in Arabic.
“We have been campaigning not for toughening the sentences, but for changing the philosophy and definition,” Ms. Hassan said. “It is about shaming. You should shame for the right thing.”