(AFP Photo \ Khaled Desouki)
Two men were handed Sunday a one-year suspended sentence for sexually harassing two women in Cairo’s Heliopolis neighbourhood early last month.
The Heliopolis Misdemeanour Court also sentenced the two defendants to a year’s hard labour for assaulting a police conscript, reported state-run Al-Ahram.
According to the investigation conducted, the defendants were verbally harassing two women when the police conscript intervened, said Al-Ahram. The defendants then physically attacked the conscript until the residents stopped them and facilitated their capture.
The sentence comes as the latest amid a string of legal measures taken in regards to sexual assault.
On 24 June, a Nasr City Court sentenced two men to two years imprisonment and a fine of EGP 5,000 each, for verbally harassing a woman inside a mall. Another court issued a swift verdict of a year in prison three days earlier to a man captured while taking a photo of a sleeping woman on a public bus.
Shortly before ceding power, former President Adly Mansour issued a law amending articles in the Penal Code, establishing harsher punishment for sexual harassment.
The amended law deals with harassment as a crime punishable by a minimum of six months in prison which could expand to five years, depending on its type. It also imposes a fine of between EGP 3,000 to EGP 50,000 on the perpetrator. The legislation expands the definition of sexual harassment, stretching it to include the use of sexual hints through “signs”, whether verbally or physically.
A report issued by the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women in April 2013 revealed an overwhelming majority of Egyptian women have experienced sexual harassment. The report said as many as 99.3% of women have reported incidents of sexual harassment, while 96.5% had been sexually assaulted.
