General Prosecutor Hamada Al-Sawy ordered last Friday the detention of a retired gynaecologist for four days pending investigations on charges of performing Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) on a 12-year-old girl that led to her death in Assiut governorate last Thursday. The father, mother, and the uncle of the young girl, Nada Abdel Maqsoud, were also detained, as they accompanied her during the operation. The girl's father had reported the incident. The prosecution's investigations are ongoing in order to determine the cause of Abdel Maqsoud's death. “The general prosecution affirms it will face with absolute firmness those accused of committing such a heinous crime,” reads a statement from the prosecution. According to the Egyptian Health Ministry in 2018, the rate of FGM among teenage girls from 15 to 17 years old fell from 74% in 2008 to 61% in 2014 in Egypt. In 2016, parliament passed amendments to the law criminalising FGM, making the practice a felony and mandating stricter punishments for those convicted of performing the illegal act. The first conviction for performing FGM in Egypt was in January 2015, seven years after the practice was first criminalised in 2008. In the 2015 case, a father and a doctor were convicted of causing the death of a 13-year-old girl who died during an FGM operation.
