FILE – smashed toy – Pxhere
CAIRO – 21 January 2019: A Giza criminal court referred five defendants, including two women, to Egypt's Grand Mufti and imprisoned a sixth defendant for life (25 years) for kidnapping and mercilessly killing a child in Giza's Awsim.
According to the Egyptian law, capital sentences must be referred to the Grand Mufti, the country's highest Islamic legal official, for consultation before they can take place. The Mufti's decision is non-binding though.
The defendants kidnapped the child, called his father asking him for a LE 200,000 ($11,000) ransom, the father said, adding that they, however, did not contact him again.
Police investigations managed to disclose the circumstances of the crime, and arrested the perpetrators. The two women admitted planning with the other defendants to kidnap the victim in retaliation against his father.
According to their confessions, one of the women, with the help of other defendants, chocked the child to death, put him in a plastic crate, wrapped him in a blanket, and threw him into an agricultural land in another village and fled.
They said that they subsequently contacted the victim's father for a ransom, but were not able to continue negotiations as the child was already killed, so they did not call again.
In the same village in Giza, another criminal court sentenced a 25-year old man to death over killing a four-year old girl inside a mosque after failing to rape her.
The convict's lawyer earlier called for carrying out a mental status examination on his client, claiming that his client suffers from paranoia.
Moreover, the attorney denied accusations his client faces, asserting that detectives were unable to reveal the circumstances of the case and find the real murderer. He also accused them of holding his client accountable with no evidence.
Police investigations found that the defendant accompanied the girl to the bathroom of the mosque, and tried to remove her clothes, but she resisted him and cried for help, which caused him to slaughter the victim and flee.
Surveillance cameras around the mosque showed the defendant leaving the mosque at the time of the crime, according to investigations. Eyewitnesses also spotted the culprit around the mosque at the time of the crime.
Kids with diapers
Cairo Criminal Court sentenced earlier in January a man to death on charges of killing a 3-year-old boy in Cairo's al-Matariya after failing to rape him, MENA news agency reported.
Another man, the killer's partner, was sentenced to 15 years in jail over the same charges.
Investigations showed that the child, who was found dead and wearing only his diaper, was thrown from the fourth floor of an apartment building by two men after they failed to sexually assault him.
Moreover, in May 2018, General Prosecutor Nabil Sadek ordered referring five of the killer's relatives to the criminal court over charges of killing the toddler's father. The defendants stabbed the father in the heart after failing to persuade him to withdraw the rape case.
In November 2018, the Cassation Court upheld death sentence to a man who admitted raping a then 20-month old girl.
In 2017, the General Prosecution referred Ibrahim Mahmoud, 35, to the criminal court. Following numerous sessions, the court referred the defendant to the Grand Mufti.
Activists argue that sexual abuse against children is always under-reported, and the statistics can widely vary as children victims are harder to speak out. A study carried out in 2009, found that 7.9 percent of men and 19.7 percent of women suffered sexual abuse before the age of 18.
The study could conclude the statistics after it had analyzed 65 articles covering 22 countries, according to the study’s results. The study was carried out by Noemi Pereda, Georgina Guilera, Maria Forns, and Juana Gomez-Benito.
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