“Put it in honor, you come out unharmed.” This phrase is a summary of corruption created by the legal loopholes that turn the murderous criminal into a guerrilla hero. .

The crisis is that the constitution equated men and women, but the Penal Code distinguished men from women in the crime of adultery, as it provided him with ways to escape punishment.

In a few days, two crimes took place in the name of honor. In Ismailia, a young man cut off the head of a man in the street and walked in, and when some tried to confront him, he said, "Your owner da (this) raped my wife (my wife) and my mother."

Some voices were buzzing on social media supporting his crime on the pretext that this is his right and that if we were in his place, we would have done more than that. And some of them said, “This is a hero who took his right to his honor and his honor.”

The paradox is that there is no relationship between the perpetrator and the victim in the first place, and there are no incidents of rape, and the killer did not say anything in the prosecution’s investigations about rape, but rather admitted that he committed his crime under the influence of drugs that he took in abundance on the morning of the crime.

Also in Fayoum Governorate, a citizen of his wife’s family detained and killed his mother-in-law, and went out on a live broadcast accusing his wife, whom he killed before the incident, of the crime of adultery, while security investigations revealed that the perpetrator was the one who lured his wife’s friend and assaulted her, and when his wife learned, she quarreled with him. He killed her.

Artworks highlight legal loopholes in honor cases (Pixabay)

A loophole addressed by the drama

This legal loophole was highlighted by artistic works in an attempt to treat it, including the movie “Excuse me, the law.” In the film, the wife, played by the artist Naglaa Fathi, kills her husband, who is played by Mahmoud Abdel Aziz, after she caught him in the act of infidelity in the marital bed and sentenced her as a felony of murder to 15 General, while if the matter was contrary to what was stated in the film, and the husband caught his wife cheating on him on the marital bed and killing her, he will be tried for a misdemeanor, not a felony, and he will be sentenced from one month to three years with suspended execution or innocence.

The discrimination granted by the law to the husband was monitored by the movie "Legal Betrayal", which indirectly exposed the flaws in this law. The events of the film revolve around two brothers. The father deprived one of the inheritance, in the role of Hani Salama. .

Law and flagrante delicto

Human rights lawyer Hisham Muhammad told Al Jazeera Net, "It is the constitution that governs us. In the text of Article 11 of the 2014 constitution, the constitution preserves equality between the rights of women and men in all aspects of life, but if we look at the text of the article on adultery in Egyptian law, we will find the opposite."

In Article 273 - the lawyer adds - an "adulterous" woman may only be tried on the basis of her husband's lawsuit, while Article 274 stipulates that a married woman who is proven to be committing adultery shall be punished with imprisonment for a period not exceeding two years, and the husband has the right to suspend the execution of the sentence.

The law also gave the husband the right to waive the case on condition that he agree to cohabitation with her, but Article 277 states that the husband who is proven to have committed adultery shall be tried with imprisonment for a period not exceeding 6 months, and this is an explicit discrimination and conflict in favor of the husband.

Muhammad added that the law gave the husband the right to accuse his wife of adultery, whether he saw her on the marital bed or outside the house or by phone and social media, but this right was denied to a married woman, so she does not have the right to accuse her husband and the only case in which she has the right to accuse her husband of adultery It is to be in the act of adultery on the marital bed, as the law gave all the ways for the man to prove that his wife is cheating on him and to prevent these ways from the woman.

He pointed out that the law defined honor killing in one case only, which is their arrest in flagrante delicto, provided that the honor crime is committed in flagrante delicto in order to be able to exploit the point of murder as a result of psychological disturbance from the trauma of the incident, which is stipulated in Article 17 of the Penal Code in order to reduce the sentence to innocence. The law also gives the father that right.

Some take advantage of the point of killing as a result of psychological distress from the trauma of honor crimes, which guarantees the innocence of the killer (Pixaby)

For her part, human rights activist Asmaa Abdel Hamid says, "Honor killing is rooted in our popular culture, for example, the traditional folk songs that resonate in many regions such as Upper Egypt, including the song from the movie Shafiqa and Metwally, which men chant in their sessions and work. She tells that Shafiqa was killed by her brother. He was suspicious of her behavior, and his companions sent her to hunt her and rip her with a knife, and when he went to the court and the judge asked him: Why did you kill Shafiqa, Mitwali, he said, “We have a tree and it has a branch of money that I cut and I don’t leave.” The judge replied to him and said, “You cut it, of course.” Execution suspended.

Asmaa continues, "Artistic heritage helps men kill their family's women in cases of suspicion of behavior. These incidents are mentioned to intimidate girls into holding on to the concept of honor."

Asmaa concluded her speech by saying that there must be cooperation on the part of human rights defenders and that there should be demands and unification of efforts to achieve justice for women, and this requires great effort.