An Egyptian Instagram advocate welcomed a court decision on Sunday to jail a former university student for eight years for sex crimes after her campaign against his abuse and harassment of women sparked a MeToo movement in her country.
Ahmed Bassam Zaki, aged in his early 20s and from a wealthy family, was detained in July last year after the Instagram campaign and tried after he was charged with indecent assault and the blackmail of at least three women, all aged 18 or younger, between 2016 and last year.
The Cairo Criminal Court on Sunday sentenced him to eight years in prison, the women’s lawyer, Ahmed Ragheb, said on Facebook.
Another court in December last year sentenced him to three years in prison after convicting him of harassing two girls online.
Zaki’s case drew widespread attention from media, religious figures and women’s groups in a country where women’s rights defenders say that sexual harassment or abuse often goes unpunished while women are often accused of provoking sex crimes.
It led to hundreds of women speaking up on social media about sexual abuse and exposing several men, including a high-profile rape case that took place at a Cairo hotel in 2014.
“We are very happy with today’s verdict because we have worked a lot on this and we are now reaping fruits,” said Nadeen Ashraf, founder of Instagram account Assault Police that revealed the case.
“A total of 11 years in prison is not bad at all,” she added.
Neither Zaki’s lawyers nor his family members were available to comment.
Ashraf was a student at the American University in Cairo when she decided last year to set up Assault Police after she heard allegations from friends at the university about Zaki.
Ashraf said that her goal was to change attitudes in Egypt toward women who experience sexual assault.
“Society always blames the victim, not the one who does the harassment. And even if they do not blame her, they pressure her to keep silent about it,” she said in an interview last year.
Judicial sources said that Zaki can appeal Sunday’s ruling before the Egyptian Court of Cassation, the country’s top civilian court.
Zaki’s lawyers have already appealed the ruling from December last year.
Zaki’s case sparked a massive online movement after emerging in July last year in Egypt, a country where a UN survey in 2013 found that 99 percent of women had experienced harassment.
Responding to the growing public debate over women’s safety, the Egyptian parliament passed a law in August giving women the automatic right to anonymity when reporting sex crimes in a bid to encourage more to report sexual assaults.
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