By Asmau Ahmad
Raslan Fadl, a doctor responsible for a circumcision that led to the death of a young girl, was on Monday in Cairo, jailed for two years.
Circumcision was a procedure that involved the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia.
Lawyer Reda Eldanbouki, of the Women’s Centre for Guidance and Legal Awareness, said this was the first of such case to come before Egyptian courts.
He said Fadl and the 14-year old girl’s father were both also handed three-month suspended sentences.
Eldanbouki said the verdict, in the first prosecution under a 2008 law banning the practice, would “help end female circumcision.”
“This will give all doctors cause for hesitation before carrying out female circumcision in future,” he said.
He said the conviction on appeal came after the defendants were cleared in an initial trial, and a further appeal was possible.
Eldanbouki said in spite of the 2008 ban, female circumcision also known as female genital mutilation (FGM) was believed to remain rampant in Egypt, especially in rural areas.
A 2008 UN report, based on Egyptian government figures, estimated that 91 per cent of Egyptian women had been subjected to the practice.
Advocates of the practice say it protects women from “sexual temptation.”
The Rights groups insisted that such act caused physical and psychological harm to the victim
