Dubai: Two brothers have strangled their sisters to death in Egypt after torturing them for a week due to their ‘bad behaviour.’
According to media reports, Egyptian authorities have launched an investigation into the crime that took place after neighbours and acquaintances of the family started speaking of the women’s misconduct.
Preliminary investigations showed that the 34-year-old and 20-year-old defendants lured their married sisters to the family home, where they detained them for a week and kept beating them before finally strangling them.
The defendants confessed to having committed the crime “wash away the shame.”
In Egypt, honour killings are frequently reported, particularly in rural areas. The practice is often motivated by the belief that a woman’s behaviour, such as engaging in premarital sex or refusing to enter into an arranged marriage, has brought shame or dishonor to the family. In many cases, the woman is killed by a male relative, a father or brother.
Honour killings are not treated as a separate crime, and the punishment for such cases is often less severe than it would be for other murders. This is due to the fact that the law in Egypt allows for leniency in cases where the killer claims to have acted in a fit of anger or passion, a legal loophole that is often exploited in honour killing cases. Furthermore, the society often justifies the act because of the patriarchal nature of it.
