Egyptian physician will stand trial in landmark female genital mutilation case

A doctor is to stand trial in Egypt on charges of female genital mutilation on Thursday, the first case of its kind in a country where FGM is illegal but widely accepted.

Activists warned this week that the landmark case was just one small step towards eradicating the practice, as villagers openly promised to uphold the tradition and a local police chief said it was near-impossible to stamp out.

Raslan Fadl, a doctor in a Nile delta village, is accused of killing 13-year-old schoolgirl Sohair al-Bata'a in a botched FGM operation last June. Sohair's father, Mohamed al-Bata'a, will also be charged with complicity in her death.

Fadl denies the charges, and claims Sohair died due to an allergic reaction to penicillin she took during a procedure to remove genital warts.

"What circumcision? There was no circumcision," Fadl shouted on Tuesday evening, sitting outside his home where Sohair died last summer. "It's all made up by these dogs' rights people [human rights activists]."

In the next village along, Sohair's parents had gone into hiding, according to their family. Her grandmother – after whom Sohair was named – admitted an FGM operation had taken place, but disapproved of the court case.

Ben_Reilly wrote:

smelly_bandit wrote:

Well it's the laws of lefty PC Ben

Fgm is much nicer sounding and that's how you delusional lefties like it

Yeah, so here you've got me, one of the most left-leaning members on this site, insisting that it be called female genital mutilation rather than FGM.

I swear, when they were handing out brains you insisted on holding open the door for the rest of the queue

Ben_Reilly wrote:

smelly_bandit wrote:

Well it's the laws of lefty PC Ben

Fgm is much nicer sounding and that's how you delusional lefties like it

Yeah, so here you've got me, one of the most left-leaning members on this site, insisting that it be called female genital mutilation rather than FGM.

I swear, when they were handing out brains you insisted on holding open the door for the rest of the queue

Didge wrote:

Ben_Reilly wrote:

Yeah, so here you've got me, one of the most left-leaning members on this site, insisting that it be called female genital mutilation rather than FGM.

I swear, when they were handing out brains you insisted on holding open the door for the rest of the queue

  


Brilliant.....