CAIRO | Egypt’s public prosecutor’s office announced early Wednesday that it had detained a student for the murder of a fellow student who refused his advances, two months after a similar murder sparked outrage in the country.
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Two weeks ago, a court asked to broadcast live the execution of the murderer of Nayera Achraf, a student stabbed to death outside her university in June to “deter the greatest number”.
On Tuesday, however, a 22-year-old Egyptian “stabbed the victim, Salma, several times with a knife”, a few steps from the Zagazig courthouse, the prosecution reports.
Also 22 years old according to the local press, the victim was studying journalism in this city 60 km north of Cairo.
The alleged murderer now faces the death penalty in the country that distributes the most capital punishments in the world for having killed the one that many Egyptians now call “the new Nayera Achraf” on social networks, where the case is debated.
For many Internet users, “Salma was murdered simply because she was born a woman in a misogynistic society”. But in the conservative country, many others blame the girl who ‘shouldn’t have been friends with a man’.
“As long as there are supporters who apologize to the perpetrators of these crimes, they will continue,” concludes another Internet user.
Egyptian women say they are regularly exposed to violence and wronged by the law, in a country where strict Islam has steadily gained ground since the 1970s.
According to the authorities, nearly eight million women had suffered violence in 2015 from a spouse, relative or stranger in the public space.