Secretary-General of the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM) Azza Al-Ashmawi has submitted a request to Prosecutor-General Hisham Barakat to appeal the sentencing of two minors to 15 years in jail, the maximum allowed by the law, for raping and killing a five-year-old girl Zeina Arafa. “The crime is atrocious, and the perpetrators should be executed in a public place as an example to anyone daring to commit a similar crime,” Al-Ashmawi said. The Port Said Juvenile Criminal Court, headed by Judge Ahmed Hamdi, found Mohamed Casper, 17, and Alaa Gomaa Ahmed, 16, guilty and sentenced the former to 20 years in jail and the later to 15 years in prison. Casper and Ahmed had trapped Arafa on her building's roof and attempted to sexually assault her. When she screamed, they threw her off the roof from the tenth floor. Hamdi said he was unable to hand down the death penalty, describing the defendants as “monstrous men”. “Unfortunately, the court is constrained by the minor's law and the criminal law because both are still minors,” he said. Casper was the victim's neighbour and had been a suspect in five other felonies, while Ahmed was the nephew of the porter at the victim's residence. The crime, which took place on 13 November, with the verdict coming on 16 February, has stirred public anger against the perpetrators. There have been demonstrations calling for the execution of Casper and Ahmed. The court ordered the maximum sentence, but the family was devastated and the mother hospitalised after hearing the verdict. “No verdict, even the death penalty, would replace the family's loss,” Al-Ashmawi said. Since the crime took place, Arafa's family have been calling for the death penalty for the perpetrators of the crime. Al-Ashmawi submitted a proposal to change article 111 of the child law of 2008 and article 17 of the criminal law, stipulating that “no accused person shall be sentenced to death, life imprisonment, or forced labour if, at the time of committing a crime, he has not reached the age of 18 years,” by articles allowing the death penalty. Al-Ashmawi's proposal came in the wake of the sentencing of the two minors, which she described as “very weak considering the heinous crime they committed”. Al-Ashmawi said that the judiciary should not be constrained by sentencing restrictions in cases of particularly hideous crimes, adding that sentencing guidelines should only be strictly applied to minors under 15 years of age. “After the age of 15, the judge should feel free to sentence such criminals to death,” she said. Many activists have been warning against the possibility of further extreme violence against women and children. Sex crimes against women are rarely prosecuted, and punishment for the accused does not always take place. Fadi Wagdi, an attorney and co-founder of the Nidal Centre for Rights and Freedoms (NCRF), stressed the need to retain the laws that apply specifically to children. “The point of the law is to rehabilitate children. It's not about applying a punishment or penalty, but about bringing them back into society,” Wagdi said. “That's why children have their own prosecution service, their own courts and their own places of rehabilitation. We don't need more deterrent laws. If we apply the laws we have now, that will be enough.” The court had initially postponed the verdict to 26 January in order to review a request made by Moataz Al-Ga'abari, the victim's lawyer, to review Casper's date of birth in an effort to have him tried as an adult. Due to security concerns hindering the transportation of the suspects to court, the verdict was postponed to 16 February. Al-Ga'abari stated that he had made his request based on a tip from another lawyer, who had convinced the victim's parents that he had a document guaranteeing the death penalty for their daughter's murderers. Although the request resulted in the postponement of the case, the document was not provided.
