The Egyptian prosecution dismissed Nov. 12 murder charges against the teenager known as “Ayyat girl,” in reference to the place the incident happened. The 15-year-old had stabbed a microbus driver with the knife he used when trying to rape her. Others were not as lucky. A woman was slammed a life sentence on Oct. 30 for killing a rapist who invaded her home while her husband was away. Even though Egypt’s judicial system has recently begun to side with female survivors of violence, there still remain fundamental flaws.
“The Ayyat case must be generalized, as long as the woman is in a state of self-defense,” said Intisar al-Saeed, lawyer and founder of the Cairo Foundation for Development and Law. “There is no doubt that there is discrimination between men and women in the entire system — from the police, to the prosecution, to the courts and back to the laws themselves,” Saeed told Al-Monitor.
