CAIRO, June 21—The Egyptian prosecutor's office said today that a young man accused of killing a student because she refused his advances has been detained, after an outcry on social media.
The alleged killer, who comes from Mansoura, north of Cairo, has been "placed in preventive detention for four days as part of an investigation into the premeditated murder of student Nira in front of her faculty," it said in a statement.
A video widely shared on social media yesterday appears to show the victim being stabbed by a young man, who is subsequently apprehended by passers-by.
The accused has "confessed to killing the victim because she refused to have a relationship with him", the prosecutor's office added.
Several witnesses, including the victim's father, said the young woman had already reported her fear of attack to the authorities.
On social media networks, some urged that similar cases "should never happen again".
"Society must together do better for its children," read one post.
Many women in Egypt say they are regularly exposed to violence and feel the law fails to protect or even harms them, in a country where the spread of a rigorous version of Islam since the 1970s and conservative traditions have hampered women's rights.
In early 2021, the government proposed — without success — a draft bill aimed at restricting the rights of nearly 50 million Egyptian women by, for example, allowing their father or their brothers to annul their marriage. — AFP
