Egypt’s Court of Cassation has upheld a sentence of eight years in prison for Ahmed Bassam Zaki, known on social media as “ABZ”, who was charged with sexually assaulting three girls. The ruling, which was issued on 17 August, is final and cannot be overturned. Zaki had initially been sentenced to eight years in
Battling against a culture of silence
Two prominent cases concerning gender-based violence – that of Ahmed Zaki, who has been accused by more than 100 women of extortion, sexual harassment, coercion and rape, and that of the gang rape at the Fairmont Hotel in 2014 – have given rise to a new movement fighting sexual violence in Egypt. Paula Al-Bahari has the details He grabbed my hair and threw me on the floor. He unbuttoned my pants [.] I tried to scream, but nothing came out. When he took what he wanted, I saw blood on my clothes. I panicked and all he had to say was Go to your uncle now, slut! You re not different than the other girls. I left and I called my mom, I told her everything. She didn t do anything.
“We’re meant to be ashamed of the way we laugh”
In her documentary, the young Palestinian filmmaker Samaher al-Qadi gives us a passionate and very personal view of what it means to be an Arab woman. Her film explores the oppression of women and its deep roots in society, but also women’s will to fight against it. By Rene Wildangel
Samaher al-Qadi’s personal journey began in 2003, when she left Palestine to study at the Cairo Higher Institute of Cinema. Ten years later, she started work on her documentary film As I want . By then, the enthusiastic new beginning heralded by the Egyptian revolution in January 2011 had already been derailed; the Muslim Brotherhood had won the election by a narrow margin and taken power. Hard-won freedoms were being gradually eroded, particularly for women. Serious sexual assaults against women had been on the rise since the start of the protests, and were consistently used as a weapon against the revolutionaries; now they acquired another n
SHARE It was November 2012 – nearly two years after the eruption of mass protests on January 25, 2011 that toppled former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. Soraya Bahgat planned to go to Tahrir Square to demonstrate against his successor, Mohamed Morsi, but changed her mind when she saw footage of a mob of men assaulting a woman, tearing off her clothes.
She took action in the only way she felt she could. She started a Twitter account called Tahrir Bodyguard and hundreds of volunteers answered the call to protect female protesters.
Fast-forward to July 2020 when university student Nadine Abdel Hamid took to Instagram and Facebook to warn women about sexual predator Ahmed Bassam Zaki. Her post led to the creation of the Assault Police Instagram account, which encouraged others to share their experiences, a movement the media called Egypt’s #MeToo.
BBC News
Published
media captionFive Egyptian women shared their stories of sexual harassment and abuse with BBC Arabic
In a rare victory for women s rights in Egypt, a 22-year-old student has been sentenced to three years in prison for sexually harassing two women using social media.
Ahmed Bassem Zaki was arrested in July in Cairo, where he attended the elite American University.
Accusations against him sparked a wider MeToo campaign as women reported their experiences of sexual harassment.
Such harassment has been illegal in Egypt since 2014.
The court, which tries cyber crimes, found Zaki guilty of sending pornographic photographs and texts to the women s phones. He can appeal against the verdict, reports AFP news agency.