Egypt asks YouTube to remove video of sex assault

Cairo: Egypt is asking YouTube to remove a video of a woman being sexually assaulted in Tahrir Square during a rally supporting the country’s newly elected president.

Presidential spokesman Ehab Badawy said in a statement late Thursday that the Egyptian Embassy in Washington made the request to YouTube, which is owned by Google Inc. Officials with YouTube could not be immediately reached Friday.

Badawy said the woman attacked asked President Abdul Fattah Al Sissi during a visit he made to her hospital to have the video taken down.

Sexual harassment has long been a problem in Egypt, but assaults have increased dramatically both in frequency and ferocity in the three years since the ouster of longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak.