{"id":710,"date":"2014-11-20T17:43:25","date_gmt":"2014-11-20T17:43:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/?p=710"},"modified":"2021-12-01T14:45:40","modified_gmt":"2021-12-01T14:45:40","slug":"egypts-first-female-genital-mutilation-trial-ends-in-not-guilty-verdict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/egypts-first-female-genital-mutilation-trial-ends-in-not-guilty-verdict\/","title":{"rendered":"Egypt\u2019s first female genital mutilation trial ends in not guilty verdict"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The first doctor to be brought to trial in Egypt on charges of female genital mutilation has been acquitted, raising fears the verdict could lead to FGM being practised with impunity.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Raslan Fadl, who is also an Islamic preacher in a village in the Nile delta, was acquitted of mutilating Sohair al-Bata\u2019a in June 2013. The 13-year-old died during the procedure.<\/p>\n<p>No reason was given \u2013 the verdict was instead scrawled in a ledger rather than announced in the courtroom in Agga, north Egypt.<\/p>\n<p>Sohair\u2019s father, Mohamed al-Bata\u2019a, was also acquitted of responsibility, despite police and health officials testifying that the child\u2019s parents had admitted taking their daughter to Fadl\u2019s clinic for the procedure.<\/p>\n<p>The doctor was ordered to pay 5,001 Egyptian pounds (about \u00a3450) to Sohair\u2019s mother after the pair reached an out-of-court settlement.<\/p>\n<p>The case had been pursued rigorously by activists and government officials in the hope that it would <a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/2014\/may\/21\/egyptian-doctor-fadl-trial-female-genital-mutilation-landmark-case\">send a strong message<\/a> to doctors that FGM, which was nominally made illegal in 2008, would no longer be tolerated. Instead, a lawyer from a local rights group \u2013 the first to take up Sohair\u2019s case \u2013 said the verdict had signalled the opposite. \u201cOf course there will be no stopping any doctor after this. Any doctor can do any FGM he wants now,\u201d Atef Aboulenein said.<\/p>\n<p>Read More:\u00a0http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2014\/nov\/20\/egypt-first-female-genital-mutilation-fgm-trial-not-guilty<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first doctor to be brought to trial in Egypt on charges of female genital mutilation has been acquitted, raising fears the verdict could lead to FGM being practised with impunity. Dr Raslan Fadl, who is also an Islamic preacher in a village in the Nile delta, was acquitted of mutilating Sohair al-Bata\u2019a in June [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[181,151,45,98,113,182],"class_list":["post-710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-acquitted","tag-egypt","tag-female-genital-mutilation","tag-fgm","tag-islam","tag-verdict"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=710"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1829,"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710\/revisions\/1829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}