The Supreme Administrative Court in Egypt issued a final ruling banning a teacher from practicing the teaching profession after being convicted of sexual harassment of 120 students in the elementary stage in Alexandria Governorate (North).

Undersecretary of the Ministry of Education Yusuf al-Deeb told AFP on Monday that "the incident dates back to 2013 and is not recent."

He added that "the teacher was dismissed in the same year" by an administrative decision from the school where he worked.

After that, a judgment of dismissal was issued against him from the Administrative Court, but he was challenged before the Supreme Administrative Court, which on Sunday upheld the ruling of the final dismissal from education, according to al-Deeb.

Minister of Education Tariq Shawky confirmed, in comments on Sunday evening, to the Egyptian journalist Amr Adeeb on MBC Egypt +, that his ministry is doing "many things to confront this (harassment), but it is not announced for reasons related to the privacy of the people concerned."

Monday's press in Egypt covered the ruling and shed light on its findings.

In clarifying the reasons for its ruling, the court said, according to the government newspaper, Al-Akhbar, that "the teacher has an educational role towards female students towards their clothing by wearing chastity and dignity, and those who touch their chastity are amputated from the educational institution."

And she confirmed that "the constant investigation and the complaints submitted by (120 students) in a school in Alexandria Governorate and their parents against the mathematics teacher, that he harassed them."

The court added, in its findings, that "schoolgirls are forbidden to sacrifice the sacred science from public order and harass them as an aggression against society as a whole."

The controversy has intensified over the issue of sexual harassment in Egypt since the occurrence of mass harassment in the center of Cairo on one of the holidays in 2008 and the repetition of these practices on several occasions after that.

A United Nations study published in 2017 showed that about 60% of women have experienced sexual harassment in Egypt.

The penalty for harassment was increased in the year 2014, which ranged between a fine of three thousand pounds ($ 190) as a minimum, and imprisonment for 5 years, with a fine of 20,000 pounds ($ 1265) as a maximum, "if the harasser has a functional, family or academic authority over the victim." .