Egyptian activist Amal Fathy sentenced to jail for sexual harassment video

A woman who posted a video on Facebook recounting her experience of sexual harassment has been given a two-year suspended sentenced by Egyptian authorities for “spreading false news,” according to the Guardian.

Amal Fathy, an Egyptian activist, posted a 12-minute video to Facebook back in May detailing sexual harassment she faced from a taxi driver before moving on to cover broader issues of harassment and assault in Cairo, while criticizing the government for not doing enough to protect women.

Two days later, Fathy was arrested, alongside her husband, a former Amnesty International researcher, Amnesty International said in a statement then. The rights group added that it had carefully scrutinized the video — finding no evidence of wrongdoing on her part — after police went into the couple’s home at 2:30 a.m., taking their young son with them, to the police station. Her husband and son were soon released, but she was kept in prison during her trial.

However, according to the Independent, Fathy remains in prison as she awaits further charges — even though she has already been tried and given a suspended sentence — including “misusing social media networks to spread material that could hurt Egypt’s security and public interest and another of belonging to an outlawed group.”

One of her defense lawyers told the Independent Fathy was extremely upset by the sentence. “She was squatting at the far end of the cell, crying and screaming. She was trembling and did not want anyone to come near her,” a defense lawyer for the activist, Doaa Mustafa, said.

“This is an outrageous case of injustice, where the survivor is sentenced while the abuser remains at large. She is a human rights defender and sexual harassment survivor, who told her truth to the world and highlighted the vital issue of women’s safety in Egypt. She is not a criminal and should not be punished for her bravery,” Najia Bounaim, Amnesty International’s North Africa Campaigns director said in a statement after news of Fathy’s continued imprisonment broke Saturday.

In a 2017 Thomson Reuters poll, Cairo was named the third most dangerous city for women. In a 2014 report, Human Rights Watch called sexual violence in Egypt an “epidemic.”

During current President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi’s inauguration in 2014, a woman seen in a video being sexually assaulted en masse in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the New York Times reported. Later, el-Sissi apologized to the woman, saying, “I am here to tell you and every Egyptian woman I apologize to all of you.”

He has not offered the same apology to Fathy.

U.N. Human Rights experts have demanded the release of Fathy because “she is reportedly suffering from acute stress as a result of her prolonged detention and was diagnosed with paralysis in July, a statement from the U.N. Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner said. “Absent such guarantees, the human rights defenders should be immediately released and all charges dropped.”

Fathy’s husband, Mohamed Lotfy, a human rights activist and executive director of the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, said he has provided all evidence his wife did not spread false news, Al Jazeera English quoted him as saying. “When a woman is subjected to sexual harassment and gets sentenced to two years and fined then this means we are telling all Egyptian women ‘shut your mouths … if you don’t want to go to prison,’” he added.

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