On Saturday morning, the Egyptian Public Ministry revealed details of a horrific crime committed by a woman who killed her 5-year-old child in the Faqous center of Sharkia governorate, northeast of Cairo, and cut his body into pieces. pieces and attempted to hide and tamper with the body.
Although the investigations indicate that the defendant is mentally responsible for her actions, the prosecution has confirmed that she will take specific legal measures to ensure the integrity of her mental faculties.
A witness from Abu Shalabi village in central Faqous, where the crime took place, called Salama Ali, told Sky News Arabia that:
The accused is called Hana and her age is not more than 30 years old, and her child, the victim, is called Saad and he is 5 years old. The defendant has been separated from her husband for more than two years and she lived with the child victim in a dilapidated house in the village and worked for a daily wage in farmland after being granted custody of the child after the divorce. Relatives of the accused confirmed that she was psychologically shaken and that this was what drove her to commit this heinous crime.
similar offenses
In recent years, Egypt has seen divorced and undivorced women commit crimes of murdering their children, for different reasons, the most important of which is to please the lover or the father-in-law. been attributed by some to the presence of psychological disorders. and mental imbalances in these women. In January 2022, a divorced woman and her lover killed her child by suffocation and threw her body off a pedestrian bridge. To satisfy the lover who demanded to get rid of her because of her repeated crying, they were arrested and sent to trial. Last September, the prosecution remanded a woman to a criminal trial for killing her child and attempting to kill the rest of her three children, with the help of her lover to force her husband to divorce, at the Manshaat Al- Qanater. , in Qalyubia, north of Cairo. Last December, the prosecution decided to imprison a woman in the town of Mansoura for helping her boyfriend kill her 6-year-old child and dumping his body in a river.
Requests for modification of automatic custody rights
Legal experts have called for changing the mother’s automatic custody rights under current law in the event of a divorce.
Shaaban Saeed, a lawyer with the High Court of Appeal and the Council of State, said in a statement to Sky News Arabia that the Personal Status Law must be taken into account when it comes to the issue of automatic custody. of the mother, and custody should be reserved for the most competent, able and physically and psychologically sound persons, and not to favor one party over the other.
Carry out a psychological and mental examination of both parties before the marriage and after the divorce
Saeed calls for the need for a binding text that imposes a psychological and mental examination of the spouses in the event of separation, especially since society has recently been shocked by the murder of their children by women of classes, cultures and of different social levels, which indicates that there is a doubt on the rule according to which the mother or the women are the most suited to the care of the children.
He explained that, based on his work and experience, the man was often led, after the divorce, to challenge the mental and psychological well-being of his divorced wife and the extent of her fitness for custody. children, at a time when it became mandatory after divorce to refer both parties to forensic medicine to show the extent of their psychological and mental fitness.
The reality is different from the perception of the legislator
He continued that at one point he argued a case in which the mother beat her children and tortured them, and there are witnesses to that.
Lawyer Ayman Mahfouz said in statements to Sky News Arabia that automatic custody of children, which the law considers a right for women, is not the best way to achieve the best interests of children, and we must revisit those laws that preceded family crime by imagining its appearance.
He continued: “The legislator believes that the mother is the most deserving of custody of the child because she feels the most pity for him and people care about his best interests, but reality sometimes tells us something something different from that perception.”
What does the current law say?
According to what is stipulated in the law on personal status, the right of custody of women ends when the young man or young woman reaches the age of fifteen. After reaching that age, the judge selects the young man or woman to remain in the care of the custodian without custody charges, until the young man reaches the age of majority and until what the young woman is getting married.
Mahfouz confirmed that the current law also requires the incubator to be trustworthy to the child, so that the child is not lost with her, and the trust requires that she be in good physical and mental health.
She is not married to a stranger, and if her dishonesty is proven, custody is immediately removed and she is transferred to the next female incubators.
New legislation is needed
Mahfouz indicated that there must be a legislative amendment which puts a condition on the automatic custody of the mother by proving her capacity and competence in the arduous task of taking in the youngsters physically, psychologically and mentally.
The lawyer, Muhammad Al-Sayed, said in statements to ‘Sky News Arabia’ that one of the worst examples he observed during his trip to family courts were mothers who used young people as pressure on the husband (the father) in the event of a divorce or even simply the existence of disagreements.
He explained that one of the strangest cases is that the mother, after the divorce, left her two young children, male and female, in a room without care, and she was in an adjacent room with her little one. friend, and an electrical short occurred which killed the children by burning and suffocating them, and another mother took custody and education and prevented her daughter from entering her stadium school and prevented her from taking the exam out of malice and humiliating her ex-husband and the youngster’s father.
And he went on to say that a third mistress used to rent out her children, the eldest of whom was 6, to beggars in one of the towns of Giza Governorate, and left them unattended with the beggars. and without food until they cried out for passers-by, and with the increase in the cries of hunger and pain of the children, the product of begging increased with it, and therefore the share of the mother who praised her children was increasing.
Lawyer Muhammad Al-Sayed concluded that “the examples are many, but you don’t find anyone who looks at them carefully, because it is inconceivable that the stony-hearted mother is present in society, and the whole attention is on the actions of the father only and that he is the one who harms his children after the divorce. But in reality it is necessary to check with both parties and that the responsibility to protect the children is a priority.
“What is happening in reality clearly indicates that it is time to change this traditional view and rely on scientific methods that examine the health and mental aspects of the father and the mother.”
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