CAIRO — An
Egyptian court on Tuesday sentenced a man to death for the murder of a student
after she rejected his advances, a judicial source said, in a case that sparked
widespread outrage.
اضافة اعلان
Mohamed Adel was
found guilty of the “premeditated murder” of fellow university student
Nayera Ashraf after he confessed to the crime in court, the source told AFP.
The verdict,
handed down in Mansoura north of
Cairo after the trial opened on Sunday, will
now be referred to the grand mufti, Egypt’s top theological authority — a
formality in death penalty cases.
A video that went
viral earlier this month appeared to show Ashraf being stabbed outside her
university in Mansoura on June 19.
She had previously
reported her fears of attack to the authorities, and the prosecution had said
messages from the accused “threatening to cut her throat” were found on her
phone.
The verdict was
met with celebrations in front of the courthouse in Mansoura, videos published
by local media showed.
The crime has
triggered widespread anger in Egypt and beyond, and was followed by a similar
on-campus shooting of a female student in Jordan a few days later.
Jordanian police
said Monday that the man suspected of killing
Iman Irshaid had “shot himself”
after refusing to turn himself in.
Meanwhile another
case began making headlines in Egypt after news that the body of TV presenter
Shaimaa Gamal had been found, nearly three weeks after her husband had reported
her missing.
Gamal’s body was
found following a tip-off from someone who confessed to their “participation in
the crime”, a prosecution statement said late Monday.
The prosecution
ordered the arrest of her husband, who is a senior judicial official, according
to the statement.
All three cases
have caused an outpouring of anger on social media, with users demanding
justice and decrying incidents of femicide in the Arab world.
Some have called
for the perpetrators to be sentenced to death, while others say men must “learn
to take no for an answer”.
Egyptian preacher
Mabrouk Attia also sparked outrage, including among women’s rights defenders,
after suggesting that Ashraf would not have met the same fate had she been
veiled.
Patriarchal
legislation and conservative interpretations of Islam in Egypt have contributed
to severely limiting women’s rights.
Nearly eight million
Egyptian women were victims of violence committed by their partners or
relatives, or by strangers in public spaces, according to a UN survey conducted
in 2015.
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