Egypt: Couple prosecuted for blackmailing teacher with obscene video

Cairo: Prosecutors in Egypt's Mediterranean city of Alexandria have ordered keeping a teenage student and her boyfriend in police custody on charges of holding a teacher at knifepoint and blackmailing him, private newspaper Al Mesri Al Youm has reported.

The incident came to authorities' attention when the 55-year-old physics teacher filed a legal complaint accusing a high-school student and her boyfriend of luring him to the latter's apartment on the pretext of giving him private lessons. The 16-year-old boy allegedly forced the teacher to take off his clothes at knifepoint and to put his hand on the girl's genitalia while capturing the scene on his mobile phone with the intention of blackmailing the tutor, according to the report.

Police investigations revealed that the boy had handed the video clip to a 20-year-old friend, who works as a tuk-tuk (a motorised rickshaw) driver and asked him to call the teacher to blackmail him into paying 100,000 Egyptian pounds (Dh22,727) in return for not releasing the scandalous video, the paper said.

The three were arrested and their mobiles seized for investigations.

The prosecutors refused defence lawyers' requests for releasing the trio and ordered their temporary jailing for 45 days pending further questioning.