Lebanon arrests three Egyptians about gang-raping a woman
Lebanese police declared on Saturday that three Egyptian nationals have arrested after being accused of gang-raping a woman in a luxury Cairo hotel in 2014.
In a statement, Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces (ISF) reported that it received a letter from Interpol in Egypt on August 27 contained the names of seven Egyptian nationals in Lebanon accused of raping a girl in 2014 in a Cairo hotel.
According to the statement, the ISF intelligence branch found that five of the seven had entered Lebanon previously and that three rested in the country.
The ISF added that the three suspects were arrested on August 28 in the village of Fatqa in Mount Lebanon, while it was claimed that the rape allegedly happened six years ago, however, the accusations just appeared online in July.
At the beginning of August, Egypt launched an investigation after it was received a letter from a national association of women that constituted a complaint from a young woman, who declared that she had been gang-raped at the Fairmont Hotel in 2014, and according to social media accounts, almost six men had drugged and raped the woman.
The arrests in Lebanon took place just after days that Egypt arrested another defendant in the case when he tried to leave the country. Moreover, last week the prosecution was trying to arrest a total of nine defendants, declaring that seven had escaped outside after the diffusion of their identities on social media.
In the same context, names and pictures of defendants, who look belong to riches families, have disseminated online, however, AFP has been incapable to confirm their authenticity.
These reports were publicly shared as well by Assault Police which is an Instagram account with more than 180,000 followers, and it is devoted to struggling for justice for rape and sexual assault survivors.
Otherwise, the accusations have also added to the resurgent #MeToo movement of Egypt, which attempts to hold accountable the sexual predators in the conservative country for their actions.
