Sarah Carr reports…

A policeman has been sentenced to 25 years imprisonment in absentia by the New Cairo Criminal Court after being convicted of sexually assaulting a woman near a police checkpoint.
The convicted policeman Wael Mohamed Ismail, a member of the security patrol force, is currently at large and did not attend the court hearing.
Conclusive forensic evidence against Ismail prevented his lawyer from presenting any defense to charges that his client kidnapped and sexually assaulted the woman.
The victim is a Sudanese national whose claim for refugee status has been rejected by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Cairo on claims that her marriage to a legally recognized refugee wasn’t registered in court.
During the court hearing, she was referred to only as “F” after her lawyer requested that her identity be protected.
The assault had taken place on Jan. 11, 2007 at 11 pm while F, a mother of three, was on her way home in a taxi after attending a party at a friend’s house.
The taxi was stopped at a police checkpoint in Dar El Salam, Cairo, where F was asked for personal identification and residency papers.
When F told the police officer that her identity papers were with her husband she was told to sit in a police patrol car which would take her to a police station in order to verify her identity.
She was in fact taken to the Fustat Gardens where Ismail — while smoking cannabis — informed her that he was going to have sex with her. In an attempt to discourage him, F told him that she was menstruating.
She was forced to perform oral sex on him at gunpoint, before he made her perform oral sex on his deputy, again at gunpoint.

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For more on how Sudanese refugees are treated in Egypt, read Nora’s testimony…