CAIRO (AP) – An Egyptian criminal court acquitted three Muslim men accused of stripping an elderly Coptic Christian woman and marching her through the streets of a village in southern Egypt in 2016, the official news agency reported. state news.
The three had been sentenced to ten years of absence in January, before being arrested and filed a new trial for the attack in the southern province of Minya, where an armed Muslim mob had attacked the 70-year-old woman four years ago. , then rumors spread that her son was having an affair with a Muslim woman. These relations are taboo in conservative Egypt.
The court handed down the verdict when the new trial of the three was concluded on Thursday.
Egypt’s chief prosecutor, Hamada el-Sawy, on Friday instructed his legal team to consider a possible appeal, the state news agency MENA reported.
The May 2016 attack hit the country. Anba Makarios, Minya’s chief Christian clergyman, told a private TV presenter, Dream TV, that the woman was dragged from her home by people who beat and insulted her before her clothes were taken off and the one to walk the streets while they sang Allahu Akbar, or “God is great”.
It also sparked a storm of condemnation on social media where users blamed the incident for the strong influence in the area of the ultra-conservative Muslims known as Salafis. In the same eruption of sectarian violence, seven Christian houses were looted and set on fire in the village of Karma, in Minya.
Christians, who make up nearly 10 percent of Egypt’s population of more than 100 million, have long denounced discrimination by the Muslim majority.
Also on Friday, the European Parliament adopted a resolution condemning the “deterioration” of human rights conditions in Egypt. The resolution came as a result of Italian prosecutors’ decision to formally investigate four senior Egyptian security forces for the kidnapping, torture and killing of 28-year-old Italian student Giulio Regeni in Egypt.
The Egyptian parliament quickly denounced the resolution as unacceptable. The measure accuses Egyptian authorities of “cheating” and “obstructing” progress in the investigation and called on EU member states to pressure Egypt to cooperate with Italian judicial authorities to allow a formal indictment of the four suspects. However, these resolutions of the European Parliament are of little importance, as foreign affairs are left to each member state.
Until last month, Egyptian prosecutors insisted that Regeni’s killer remains unknown. Authorities alleged that the Cambridge University doctoral student was the victim of ordinary thieves.
The EU Parliament’s resolution also listed a set of human rights violations recorded in Egypt since last year and condemned the recent crackdown on the Egyptian Personal Rights Initiative, one of the country’s few advocacy groups.