Egyptian Court Bans Army’s ‘Virginity Tests,’ Calls Them Degrading

From the DAILY BEAST:

A court in Egypt has forbidden the Army from carrying out so-called virginity tests on female detainees. The verdict was delivered in the case of Samira Ibrahim, a 25-year-old marketing manager and activist brave enough to defy the country’s Army

In March of this year, military forces violently broke up a sit-in of protesters who had continued to camp out in Tahrir Square after Mubarak’s ouster. Women as well as men were arrested. According to testimony they gave to international human-rights groups, the women were insulted, accused of prostitution, beaten, and tortured. At a military camp to which they were transported, seven of the women—those who were unmarried—were subjected to “virginity tests,” stripped and inspected by a male military doctor while soldiers and officers looked on.

“On that day, I truly wished for death,” Ibrahim says in a video testimony posted online. “I kept telling myself, people get heart attacks and die, why don’t I get one?”

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