A former PhD student has been sentenced to four and a half years in prison for arranging to send a young girl to Iraq for female genital mutilation (FGM), in the first conviction of its kind in England and Wales. Emad Kaky, 47, was found guilty of conspiring to commit FGM last month, the first time a person had been convicted of a conspiracy charge in relation to FGM.
Strangely, we aren't told what his relationship to the victim was, or how he seemingly had custody of the child in order to do it. No doubt to protect her identity, but there's a mother involved somewhere here, surely...
A two-week trial at Nottingham crown court heard how Kaky had arranged for a child to travel from the UK to Iraq where he had organised for her to be subjected to FGM and forced into marriage. Emad Kaky described FGM as ‘normal’ in messages found on his phone. The plans were uncovered, before the crimes could be carried out, by a witness who arranged for the girl to travel back to the UK and reported Kaky to the police.
A foreign custom, planned to be carried out by a foreigner in a foreign land, caught by good old British justice?
Sentencing Kaky, Judge Nirmal Shant KC said his plans were barbaric. “You made concerted efforts to make sure this happened. I make, nonetheless, some adjustment for the fact that no FGM took place, and importantly, thankfully, [the girl] was unaware of any of these plans,” she said.
“This offence calls for a deterrent sentence. What you did, what you had planned, was barbaric.”
Not that much of a deterrant, is it? Four and a half years being sheltered and fed at the taxpayer's expense?
Janine McKinney, chief crown prosecutor for CPS East Midlands, said: “This has been a landmark prosecution, not just because it is the first conviction of its kind, but for the message it sends to people who may be vulnerable to this horrific form of abuse.”
It'd be a far stronger message if he was kicked out of the country at the end of it.
The defence barrister Geraldine Kelly told the court Kaky’s academic accomplishments as a PhD student at the University of Nottingham were “respected” and “impressive”, and that losing his job was “in itself a form of punishment”.
No sweetie, those are consequences. Why in a case with three women involved - judge, prosecutor and defence - is the outcome so bloody weak?
