Father applauded for reporting wife over FGM turns out to be perpetrator

CAIRO – 21 October 2018: An Upper Egyptian man celebrated on social media for reporting his wife over circumcising their daughters turned out to have taken his girls himself to be cut, according to Saturday investigations.

Nour el-Din H., a laborer, filed a report against his wife in a police station of Qena governorate, claiming that his daughters, 12 and 10 years old, went through female genital mutilation (FGM) after their mother took them to a practitioner.

The penalty for anyone who performs FGM varies between five to seven years of imprisonment. The law, enacted in 2016, also entails that whoever presents the female to have FGM performed on her is to be imprisoned for no less than one year and no more than three years.

The prosecution summoned the wife, who arrived with her daughters. The daughters testified that it was the father who took them to an outpatient clinic where FGM was performed on them, with the mother’s knowledge.

It was revealed that the couple has been going through domestic problems for four years, and each one lives separately.

A court ordered Nour el-Din to pay LE 30,000 to his wife and children for not paying any of their expenses for prolonged periods, and sentenced him to jail for a month in case he fails to pay. His false report seems to be in retaliation for his wife’s success to win her case.

Earlier on Saturday after news of his report circulated on social media, many Egyptians, especially women, celebrated the man for his seemingly anti-FGM step. Being from Upper Egypt, where FGM is rampant and is considered part of a woman’s honor and, by extension, of her male relatives’ honor, the news was given extra attention.

Several studies reported that more than 90 percent of Egyptian women are circumcised, a figure that prompted legislative and religious authorities to ban the act.