Egypt court hands father prison sentence for detaining, beating daughter over inheritance 

An Egyptian court has handed a one-year prison sentence to a father who detained his daughter and beat her following disputes over her inheritance, reports Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.

According to a TV interview with MBC Egypt, Nora Ali Essam, 23, lived with her grandparents and when the grandfather died, he left his granddaughter a third of the estate.

Her father was living in Japan at the time and returned to Cairo to try and take her abroad with him with the aim of stealing her share of the money, which was more than what he had been left by his father.

After Nora refused to go with him he beat her and locked her up in another house.

READ: Rights group in Egypt calls for release of 145 women, 89 children in prison

The story of what happened to Nora spread on social media in June shortly after her disappearance. A hashtag ‘Where is Nora?’ spread on social media and helped put pressure on authorities to solve her case. Nora was later found in the Maadi area of Cairo having been kidnapped by her father.

Before the court case, Nora’s uncle reportedly tried to pressure Nora into denying that her father, Ali Esssam, held her against her will.

The inheritance system in Egypt is based on Islamic law and allows men to inherit double what a woman would receive.

In Egypt, there has been resistance to granting women equal inheritance rights. In 2018, when Tunisia proposed a bill on equal inheritance rights for men and women, Egypt’s Al-Azhar spoke out about inheritance reform, claiming it contradicted Islamic law and destabilised Muslim societies.