RAPISTS will not have a new opportunity to attack a new victim. A new bill will associate rape and abduction of girls and women with capital punishment and the minimum is life sentence. The People's Assembly (the Lower House of the Parliament) has decided to get tougher with rapists after more women and girls have been suffering from a sense of insecurity when they go outdoors alone, legal experts said. To make matters worse, the daytime has no longer provided safety and protection to the victims. Terror overwhelmed families after children were abducted, raped and stabbed to death if they happened to know their rapists. According to the police records, about 93 cases of rape were reported over the past few months. About 468 girls and women were sexually assaulted during the same period. The figures, disclosed by police General Hamed Rashed, the Director of the General Department of Legal Affairs in the Ministry of Interior, also showed that 90 girls and women were abducted and miraculously survived rape or murder attempts. The Ministry of Interior sounded the alarm bell during a recent session organised by the Parliamentary Committee for Defence and National Security. A shiver was sent down the spine of the committee's members when General Rashed complained that the present Penal Code was lenient to rapists and abductors of females. Hours after the committee's meeting, Minister of Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, Mufied Shehab (pictured above) told the press that the proposed amendments were made to deter rapists. Shehab added that the amendments would include harsh sentences to molesters and schoolboys, who would hang out at the gates of girl schools. In his statement, Shehab confessed that the present punishment enshrined in the Penal Code would encourage suspects to attack new victims. According to Shehab, sexual molestation online or via SMS text messages do not come within the purview of the current Penal Code. Apparently confident of the effectiveness of the new move, Shehab said: “The amendments will remarkably reduce crimes involving rape and abduction of women.” His emphasis means that convicted rapists will be hanged to death, or thrown into jail for life. Observing that the committee had almost accomplished its legal task, Shehab observed that the new amendments would soon be submitted to the Cabinet to re-examine them before referring them to the Parliament as soon as possible. Initial reports about the new amendments disclosed that Article 267 of the Penal Code will be heavily amended to maximise punishment to convicted rapists to death sentence. Also Article 268, which gives the sexual assaulter a punishment of three or seven years in jail at the maximum, will be amended to increase the punishment in this case to seven years, or life imprisonment, especially if the attacker threatened his victim.
