FGM: Doctor referred to criminal court after girl, 12, dies

CAIRO – 23 February 2020: Egypt’s top prosecutor on Saturday referred a doctor and two others to the criminal court after a 12-year old girl died undergoing female circumcision, also known as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), that he performed in Upper Egypt’s Assiut.

Four people, including a parent, an uncle and a retired physician, were imprisoned four days pending investigation in January following the incident. The initial investigations revealed that parent and the uncle went to a gynecologist for FGM. However, after the retired doctor carried out the FGM operation, the girl suffered from complications led to her death.

The General Prosecution on Saturday urged doctors to fulfill their educational role by correcting the society’s misconceptions concerning circumcision, including get people acquainted with the consequent harm and pain of such practice to women.

The Public Prosecution in a statement called on everybody to cooperate to eliminate such phenomenon and not to cover such “crime” up.

“The Public Prosecution also appeals to the legislator to reconsider the penalty stipulated for the perpetrator of a circumcision crime if he is a doctor,” the statement added.

Egypt imposed a complete ban on female genital cutting — also known as female genital mutilation or circumcision — in June 2007 after Budour Shaker, a 11-year-old girl in Upper Egypt’s Minya, died of an excessive dose of anesthesia while being cut at a private clinic.

Egypt’s Grand Mufti, the government’s official arbiter of Islamic law, decreed during the same year that female genital cutting was forbidden by Islam, in his strongest statement against the practice.

FGM was criminalized by Egyptian parliament in June 2008, thus creating a paradigm shift by moving the practice from social norm to crime.