WATANI International
8 July 2011
The 17-year-old Christine Ezzat Fathy and her 14-year-old cousin Nancy Magdy Fathy, who had gone missing four weeks ago from their homes in the village of Nazlet Ebeid in Minya, Upper Egypt, last Wednesday met their fathers for the first time since they had left home.
Christine and Nancy were reported missing on 12 June, were found by the police with a Muslim family in Cairo and, upon their request, were placed in a shelter for young women. It was circulated that the girls had eloped, wished to convert to Islam and marry the Muslim men with whose family they were staying. Since Christine and Nancy are underage and thus legally neither eligible to marry or to convert, and since they were afraid their fathers would punish them harshly for their elopement, they asked to be placed in a shelter.
Last Monday, the girls were moved from the shelter they were in to another ‘secret’ one. The move was undertaken by the security authorities, as a ##cautionary move##, and the prosecution office was aware of it.
On Wednesday, the girls were taken to the premises of the National Council for Motherhood and Childhood in the Cairo suburb of Maadi where they met their fathers. The lawyer and rights activist Naguib Gabrail attended the meeting which lasted for more than two hours. Gabrail says the meeting was very moving in that it was dominated by warmth and affection. The girls did not wear the Islamic veil, the hijab, but had their hair uncovered. Gabrail says they called their mothers in Minya, the first such contact since they went missing last month.
It was decided, he said, that the two girls would undergo therapy while at the shelter they are in, to help them come to terms with the dilemma they have been through and to prepare them to ultimately go back home.