Paris, June 4 (ANI): A Guinean Islamic couple in France has been convicted for carrying out genital mutilation on their four daughters aged between 11 and 20.
The father was sentenced to two years and his wife got 18 months for allowing a 'doctor' to remove parts of their daughters' vaginas.
They were charged with 'complicity in voluntary violence having led to mutilation by an older person of a minor under the age of 15 years', a crime punishable by a maximum of 20 years jail.
According to The Daily Mail, the case has shocked France and was branded as a 'grave crime' and an 'intolerable affront to women's dignity by a female government minister.
The couple originally came from the West African state of Guinea where according to a 2007 study, 96 percent of young girls have their genitals mutilated in the name of religion.
At the trial in Nevers in central France the two youngest victims had declared themselves plaintiffs under French law, but the elder daughters withdrew their complaint and sided with their parents.
Nathalie Bouvier-Longeville, a lawyer representing the two youngest sisters told the court: ' By what right were the parents able to appropriate parts of their daughters' bodies?
Moroccan- born Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, 35, Minister of Women's Rights in the new government of Fran?ois Hollande, has now pledged a crackdown on the illegal practice.
She vowed to track down what she called ' executioners' who have performed covert surgery on an estimated 50,000 young girls in France. (ANI)
|
|
Comments:
