On Thursday, the Egyptian Public Prosecution Office ordered the referral of two famous young women on social media to criminal courts for “infringing on family values” and human trafficking.
The Egyptian prosecution said in a statement posted on its Facebook page that the two defendants, Haneen Hosam, Mawaddah Al-Adham, and three others, were referred to the criminal court while their detention continued.
The statement added that other charges were brought against the two detainees, among them, “their creation and management of special accounts via the information network to commit the crime of violating family principles and values ​​in Egyptian society.”
The statement continued that some of those arrested were in possession of programs designed without permission from the Communications Regulatory Authority, or justified by reality or the law, with a view to using them to facilitate the commission of these crimes, and that one of the girls helped him to flee from the judiciary with his knowledge of this, and to hide evidence of the crime, and publish it Matters that affect public opinion in favor of a party to the lawsuit. ”
During the past two months, the security services in Egypt arrested famous young women on social media applications, and referred them to the Public Prosecution on moral charges, in a move that caused controversy.
In April, Haneen Hossam, a student of the Faculty of Archeology at Cairo University known in Egypt for her publications on the Chinese social networking application “Tik Tok”, broadcast a video clip inviting Egyptian girls to work with her.
Hossam, who is not under the age of twenty and whose account is followed by 1.3 million people, appeared in the tape wearing a gray shirt and a red veil and addressed the girls saying, “I know you have financial problems. I have established an agency (…) and I want at sunset (group) girls I just don’t want any boy. ”
She added: “You will get to know people and make friends respectfully and beautifully … The most important thing I have a reputation … and everything has its price, according to the views, from 36 dollars to 2000 and 3000 dollars.”
After the video spread, some media professionals in Egypt called for an investigation, and they called on families to monitor their daughters for fear of being involved in “prostitution”.
Egyptian police later arrested Hossam. On April 23, the Public Prosecutor charged her with “committing the crime of trafficking in human beings by dealing with natural persons who are girls who used them in acts contrary to the principles and values ​​of Egyptian society to obtain … material benefits.”
In May, the affection for Adham, a twenty-year-old celebrity, “Tik Tok”, was arrested, and her account on Instagram is close to two million people. She was charged with “assaulting family principles and values ​​in Egyptian society.”
At the end of May, the police arrested Mena Abdel Aziz, a 17-year-old girl who was also known for the application “Tik Tok”, after she appeared in a video clip with the effects of an assault on her face, and said that she was raped and beaten by a friend who filmed and published what happened.
The Public Prosecutor ordered that she be held in custody for “incitement to immorality”, before issuing a decision to replace her incarceration by “not leaving her a designated center” to host and protect abused women and introduce rehabilitation programs to fix them “, and arrested six other people on charges of rape.
