Egypt girl who stabbed her rapist released

The Ayat girl, who murdered a microbus driver who tried to rape her, has been released from prison, according to Shorouk News.

When he saw his daughter, her father said: “I thank God first and then the judge for doing justice to my daughter and defending her honour,” adding, “I trusted my daughter.”

In July Amira Ahmed Rizk was at Giza Zoo with her boyfriend when they became separated from one another. As her boyfriend had her phone, she used another phone to call it and a microbus driver answered and asked her to come and get her phone.

When she arrived, she found the driver, her boyfriend and another man. They got into the microbus but in the middle of the journey her boyfriend, his friend and the other commuters got out. The driver then attempted to rape Amira at knifepoint.

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At the time, Amira’s lawyer Dina El-Mokadem said that she took the knife and stabbed him 14 times in self-defence. Further investigations revealed that the microbus driver was a friend of her boyfriend which suggested they had engineered the situation to sexually assault her.

Social media users called for Amira to be let out of prison in fear that she would not be released because under Egyptian law the rape must take place for murder to be considered self-defence.

Initially it was announced by forensics that skin belonging to someone else other than the microbus driver was found under Amira’s nails suggesting there was a third person involved in the case, however, a report later said that the skin belonged to the microbus driver and not someone else.

‘I killed him,’ says 15-year-old ‘Ayat girl’ was detained for stabbing her rapist
[Cartoon – Doaa Eladl]

The case shone a spotlight on sexual harassment in Egypt. A 2013 UN study showed that over 99 per cent of Egyptian women have suffered some form of sexual harassment.

A government hotline advertised by the Egyptian National Council of Women ignored 95 per cent of calls made by women, according to an experiment conducted by Egyptian Streets.

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Last month three teenagers stood trial for murdering 18-year-old Mahmoud El-Banna, who stepped in to defend a teenage girl they were sexually harassing in the street.

Security forces initially announced that El-Banna was killed following an argument with some of his friends in a café before CCTV footage of him being chased through the streets circulated online.

El-Banna died in hospital and was dubbed “the martyr of chivalry”. Thousands of people joined his funeral procession.