Public Prosecutor Abdel Maguid Mahmoud decided to refer to Cairo Criminal Court 11 people charged with trafficking human beings, selling and buying four newborns so that they could be illegally adopted, forging official documents (such as birth certificates and passports) and using them to prove false parenthoods as well as trying to send children out of the country. This came just few hours after Al-Masry Al-Youm had unveiled the members of this gang which smuggled Egyptian children to the US as well as the details of the crime. Medical and security sources told Al-Masry Al-Youm that among the 11 accused are four doctors and nurses as well as three people with both the Egyptian and the US nationality. During the Prosecution's investigations, they confessed to committing the crime to end the crises of women pregnant with illegitimate children and help them with money by buying their newborns. According to the investigations, carried out by first assistant interior minister and Cairo Security director Ismail el-Shaer, a notification was submitted to Qasr el-Nil police station [downtown Cairo] by the US Embassy. According to such notification, a woman with both the Egyptian and the US nationalities asked the embassy to register her children and grant them US passports. According to the information obtained by the investigation bureau, the woman had asked for the help of two doctors working in a private hospital, whom she had met through a tourist guide. The two doctors helped her get in contact with an Egyptian lady who had delivered an illegitimate daughter in the hospital they worked for. They all agreed to buy the child for LE 20,000, LE 10,000 for the doctors and the rest for the mother. This information also points put that the same woman bought another daughter with the same technique for LE 11,000. The investigation bureau arrested the doctors, the woman, the tourist guide and a nurse. During the investigations, it emerged the two doctors had sold two children of another woman for LE 25,000 each around two months before. The doctors led the police to the woman's residence and she was arrested. The accused also revealed the names of other accomplices. According to further information obtained by the investigation bureau, other people are involved in the sale of Egyptian children to Canadian and US women throughout 2008. The general prosecutor decided to issue a press release yesterday after Al-Masry Al-Youm had published the details of the crime and to send 11 people to Cairo Criminal Court. This is the first time the amendments of the law on sanctions, children and the civil status have been applied. These amendments forbid harming children's right not to be trafficked and exploited and were introduced in 2008 in spite of the low number of such cases in Egypt. Through these arrests, Cairo has complied with its international commitments by virtue of the UN Convention on the Right of the Child, the UN convention to counter organized crime and the protocol annexed to it on preventing and countering the trafficking of human beings, especially women and children. In light of the results of the investigations carried out by the Public Prosecutor's technical office, Counselor Abdel Maguid Mahmoud informed the Ministries of Health and Social Solidarity as well as the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM) so that they could take the necessary measures to provide health and psychological assistance to the children and guarantee all their legal and constitutional rights.
