CAIRO - A 20-year-old female student, who has triggered a public outrage when she uploaded her naked photographs on the Internet as an expression of personal freedom and protest against the society, will be taken to court for indecency, a Cairo lawyer said. The prosecutors will decide whether to indict Ms Aliaa Magdi el-Mahdi, who claims that she is a student attending the American University in Cairo (AUC), for committing acts of public indecency as well as damaging the reputation and image of Egyptian women after she posted nude pictures of herself on her "Memoirs of a Revolutionary" blog, which has received 1.5 million hits since last week. Ms el-Mahdi wrote that her photos were an act of rebellion against Egypt's conservative culture and “sexual complexes,” in the spirit of the revolution. In one of the nude self-portraits, el-Mahdi faces the camera wearing no more than a red ribbon in her hair, thigh-high tights, and red shoes. However, Ahmed Ali, a spokesman and coordinator for the Law and Theology Graduates' Association, said that he would take el-Mahdi and her boyfriend Karim Nabil Sulieman to court for posing "in indecent situations that the general public could witness" as well as spreading debauchery. Ali also said that the couple, who has received a lot of condemnations for their defiance as well as damaging the reputation and image of Egyptian women, should also be tried for insulting Islam. Ahmed Amin, a lawyer, told The Gazette that Aliaa and Kareem should be "punished by law" for their alleged crime. "The couple publicised for their nude photos, which is considered solicitation, punishable by law for spreading debauchery by jail sentences or fines. The maximum punishment for public indecency is up to three years in prison, or a fine of LE1,000 or more," Amin said. The row over Ms el-Mahdi's photos came during a critical time, where tensions between Islamists and secularists are already running high ahead of a landmark election later this month.
