Fatal stabbings highlight violence against women in Egypt
STORY: Mary Magdy lives in constant fear for her life and the lives of her daughters.
The 35-year-old Cairo resident went to police four times to report her husband's violent assaults.
He's in prison now, but she said she had faced pressure to reconcile.
"It's done, I felt like my rights were gone when he beat me. Every time, I filed a police report then dropped it after a day or two, because we have three daughters. We are Christian. Friends and family would ask me to give him another chance."
There's been a series of violent crimes against women in Egypt, drawing attention to the gaps in legal and social protections that have left them vulnerable.
One study by an NGO found more than 800 crimes of violence against women and girls last year.
That’s up from 415 in 2020...
...though activists say most cases are believed to go unreported, making gender-based violence hard to measure.
In June, student Nayera Ashraf was killed after being stabbed 19 times.
It came out that the man convicted of killing her was harassing her – including online – after she turned down his marriage proposal.
The case sparked protests in other parts of the Middle East.
Khaled Abdel Rahman is her family’s lawyer.
"Unfortunately, despite the fact that internet crimes are a new addition to the penal code, the proceedings carried out by the police force's internet division are very slow. This is the first time I have said this: if the reports were handled according to the law and action was taken against this defendant, she would not have been killed."
Lobna Darwish, a gender specialist at an NGO, said violence at home is still widely ignored.
There’s no law criminalizing violence against women.
"The state is using certain cases as examples, by choosing certain cases that provoke the public opinion and use some of them to hand down heavy sentences against those who committed the violence, and who are mostly men, when they are not part of (the victim's) family, when they are strangers or in the case of Nayera, her university colleague."
In Ashraf’s case, the man was sentenced to death in July.
The prosecutor’s office directed Reuters to a previous statement in which it said it takes a firm response to violence and aggression, especially against women and girls.
In Magdy's case, her lawyer says there's a lack of legal procedures that could protect her...
And she's unable to get a divorce, due to her religion.
She worries what will happen when her husband is released next year.
