CAIRO: An Egyptian doctor sentenced to two years in prison over a girl’s death during a female circumcision operation said Tuesday he was on the run, but an NGO claimed he is still practicing.
Police said they were seeking the doctor, Raslan Fadl, after his sentencing in January and denied the claim that his clinic is still open.
Fadl is the first doctor sentenced to prison for female genital mutilation (FGM), since the practice, still widespread, was banned in 2008.
The court in Mansoura province also handed a suspended three-month sentence to the father of the victim, 14-year-old Sohair Al-Bataa.
Eleven months later, Fadl said he was still free and hiding from police.
“I am in very bad condition,” he told AFP by phone. “I am moving around every day, scared of detectives. They want to apply the sentence and I have to move around.”
Fadl denied that he was practicing medicine, but the New York-based women’s rights group Equality Now said his clinic was still open.
“He has not served a single day of his prison sentence and his clinic remains open,” the group said.
The group said representatives had traveled to his province demanding his arrest.
“Though the chief of police promised to do within 48 hours, Dr. Fadl still remains free,” it said.
A police official told AFP Fadl was being sought. “There is a final ruling against this doctor, and we are trying to apprehend him,” he said, adding that the clinic was closed. FGM involves extreme mutilation, in a bid to control women’s sexuality
Egypt female circumcision doctor at large or practicing?
Egypt female circumcision doctor at large or practicing?
Iran, UK foreign ministers in rare direct contact
- A UK government source said Cooper “emphasized the need for a diplomatic solution on Iran’s nuclear program and raised a number of other issues”
TEHRAN: Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has spoken by phone with his British counterpart Yvette Cooper, an Iranian foreign ministry statement said on Saturday, in a rare case of direct contact between the two countries.
The ministry said that in Friday’s call the ministers “stressed the need to continue consultations at various levels to strengthen mutual understanding and pursue issues of mutual interest.”
A UK government source said Cooper “emphasized the need for a diplomatic solution on Iran’s nuclear program and raised a number of other issues.”
The source in London said Cooper raised the case of Lindsay and Craig Foreman, a British couple detained in Iran for nearly a year on suspicion of espionage.
The Iranian ministry statement did not mention the case of the two Britons.
It said Araghchi criticized “the irresponsible approach of the three European countries toward the Iranian nuclear issue,” referring to Britain, France and Germany.
The three countries at the end of September initiated the
reinstatement of UN sanctions against Iran because of its nuclear program.
The Foremans, both in their early fifties, were seized in January as they passed through Kerman, in central Iran, while on a round-the-world motorbike trip.
Iran accuses the couple of entering the country pretending to be tourists so as to gather information for foreign intelligence services, an allegation the couple’s family rejects.
Before Friday’s call, the last exchange between the two ministers was in October.
