The man stopped on his return from Africa: My husband did a horrible thing. Yassine Baradai, National Secretary of the Union of Islamic Communities of Italy: Barbaric and Tribal Practice
from our correspondent
Piacenza
You have to help me, my husband did a horrible thing. He must be punished …. She was shocked, this woman who presented herself to the carabinieri in Piacenza last May. Originally from a state in central Africa, in her thirties, she had discovered that her daughters, two little girls, had been subjected to infibulation, the barbaric female genital mutilation that involves the removal of the clitoris. It would have happened during a trip that the man – a religious who carries out his activity outside Italy – made in his country and during which he brought the little ones with him. The arrest triggered when, a few days ago, he returned to Piacenza, left for another period abroad.
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The investigation
The judicial investigation, entrusted to the prosecutor Grazia Pradella and the substitute Daniela Di Girolamo, had in the meantime been started. A gynecological visit to the ASL confirmed what the mother had put pen to paper in the complaint: and what the girls had been infibulated months ago. Her husband now risks a very heavy sentence: the Italian law provides penalties of up to 12 years for the offense of infibulation even if committed abroad, as long as whoever commits it or has it committed resides in our country. There is also for him the aggravating circumstance of having inflicted the criminal practice on the younger daughters. Precisely because of the protection of the privacy of the girls, it filters very little from the investigators. The religious – with a clean record, in Emilia for several years – would have brought the girls with him during a trip dating back to last year in his country. Here, during this kind of vacation in which he reunited with the family clan, he had his daughters infibulated.
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The mother’s complaint
It is not clear if his wife imagined what would happen to the little ones, who remained away from her for several months. Of course that the decision to lodge the complaint was very difficult, his was a real request for help, says one of the Piacenza investigators. The woman was immediately entrusted to a psychologist of the weapon who followed both her and the girls. In the coming days it will be entrusted to the Social Services of the Municipality of Piacenza and it is not excluded that the Prosecutor decides to place them all in a protected structure. The case – anticipated by the city newspaper Libert – created confusion in Piacenza. Since the beginning of the year the gynecologists of family clinics of the provincial Ausl – which, coordinated by Cristina Molinaroli, carry out an incessant awareness-raising action with the anti-violence centers, especially at school – visited a dozen women who have undergone infibulation, all in the countries of origin. The most exposed women come for the most part from Egypt, Somalia, the Horn of Africa, Yemen, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Southeast Asia.
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The Secretary of the Union of Islamic Communities: Barbarism
The stories collected are a photocopy of what the mother of the two girls reported to the police. It is the fathers – but sometimes also the mothers – who bring their daughters to their countries with the excuse of the holidays. Then the girls return with infibulation, often indoctrinated to believe that this practice is correct which is usually performed before the age of 12. Now Yassine Baradai, national secretary of the Union of Islamic Communities of Italy and also the president of the large Islamic community of Piacenza, shakes his head. Infibulation is a barbaric and tribal practice — dice Baradai al Corriere della Sera
– that it finds no foundation in religions. necessary to counter it and eradicate it in all ways.
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September 4, 2021 (change September 4, 2021 | 23:26)
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