Egypt: Woman killed by husband 48 hours after her wedding after saying ‘no’

An Egyptian man murdered his wife three days after their wedding reportedly because she refused to have sex with him.

Mohamed M, a policeman, told the prosecution in Tanta, a city in the Nile Delta, that he was “fed up and tired and could no longer be patient with her.”

There has been an alarming spate of femicides in Egypt, often after women say no.

Last year, three women were murdered by men after they turned down their marriage proposals.

Naira Ashraf and Salma Bahgat were stabbed to death and Kholoud Al-Sayed Farouk was strangled to death.

Also last year, a prominent judge killed his wife, the TV presenter Shaimaa Gamal who spoke out about domestic violence before being killed.

According to the Tadwein Centre for Gender Studies, there were 151 cases of femicide and female suicide last year alone.

In 2020 a group of men killed 24-year-old Mariam Saleh after sexually harassing her whilst she was walking home from work.

Mariam was then killed after one of the men grabbed her handbag, and another accelerated, dragging her alongside the car where she was pulled under the wheels and then hit a parked car.

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Human rights groups have accused the government of focusing on the arrest of women and detaining them on so-called immorality and debauchery charges, rather than cracking down on curbing violence against women.

Just one month ago beauty queen Marwa Adel was stabbed 25 times by her neighbour and suffered significant injuries.

In 2017 Cairo was named the most dangerous city in the world for women with 99 per cent of female residents reporting that they had been sexually harassed.

Egypt has had its own #MeToo movement and dozens of women have come forward to talk about their experiences of sexual violence and rape, however the femicides continue.

In November last year the women’s rights NGO Equality Now called on MENA governments to urgently review sex discriminatory laws, highlighting that in Egypt women who are victims of domestic violence are not protected because domestic abuse and marital rape are not explicitly criminalised under Egyptian law.