CAIRO: Closure could be brought to two long-standing, unrelated legal sagas in Egypt: that of the kidnapping and “sale of babies and 200,000 bags of contaminated blood which were sold to the Ministry of Health by medical supply company Hidelina.
Chancellor Al-Mohammadi Qunsua declared Wednesday at Cairo Criminal Court that verdicts for the two cases would be decided in September, according to a MENA news agency report carried by Masrawy news portal.
Adoption is forbidden in Islam and 12 individuals are charged with the kidnap and trafficking of babies and children. The prosecution claims they bought and sold babies. To circumvent the 2008 Child Law and complete an adoption, agencies and adoptive parents often forge or are unknowingly provided forged documents which claim the children are their own.
Last year American couple Iris Botros and Louis Andros were charged with kidnapping after going to the US Embassy in Cairo to apply for citizenship for the two children they adopted. It was discovered Botros had falsified the children’s birth certificates and an investigation was launched.
Botros is a member of the Coptic Christian community, which complicates the case. The Coptic population finds itself in a confusing situation with regards to adoption in Egypt because while it is permissible in Christianity to adopt, Egyptian law doesn’t allow it. Unable to legally process an adoption, measures which are technically illegal are often taken by agents and the families involved.
The position of the prosecution and government figures is that what is considered adoption is in fact human trafficking and kidnap. Such offenses carry grave, lengthy punishments. Many believe that the children ought to be kept in their home countries, in orphanages or foster homes.
A defense attorney is quoted as saying “the core of the case is to ensure parents who cannot conceive can adopt children that are either homeless or abandoned by their families, and there are no criminal charges in the Egyptian law for that. The attorney is referring to the widely reported practice of agents buying newborn babies for an allotted sum from their parents.
The case of Hidelina’s sale of 200,000 blood bags contaminated with bacteria and fungi to the Ministry of Health captured media attention, implicating the company’s owner and former MP Hany Sorour.
Earlier investigations had revealed negligence on the part of several departments at both Hidelina and the ministry as well as public hospitals and monitors of blood quality. The scandal raised serious questions about communication and assurance checks in blood collection, storage and use in Egypt.
Defendants in the case had been exonerated in May 2008, a verdict which was subsequently appealed as the case was brought back to life.
Each case has proven very unwieldy, ensnaring vast networks of people and their accompanying information and interests. But there may be light at the end of the tunnel for these multi-year sagas.
