EGYPT JAILS U.S COUPLES FOR ADOPTION

Two US couples have been jailed for two years in Egypt for illegal child trafficking.
Seven other people were also sentenced in the case, the first of its kind in the country, which became public earlier this year after the US embassy in Cairo reported its suspicions of the couples after they tried to get their adopted children out of Egypt.

• The four, Iris Botros and Louis Andros of Durham, North Carolina, and Egyptian-born Suzan Hagoulf and her husband Medhat Metyas, were also fined 100,000 Egyptian pounds ($18,150) each.
• They went on trial in May on charges of child trafficking and forgery after being arrested in December.
• The couples, all Christians, were trying to adopt children from a Christian orphanage that allegedly provided them with false documents that certified the children were born to them.
• A lawyer for the couples said they planned to appeal against the verdict.
• The other seven defendants sentenced in the case on Thursday, were all Egyptians, including a nun connected to the orphanage, orphanage employees and a doctor who provided fake birth certificates.
• Four of the seven remain at large and were sentenced in absentia. The Egyptians were sentences to either two or five years imprisonment and their fines were equal to those of the Americans.
• Two US embassy officials attended the trial but declined to comment.
• Rights activists confirm trafficking in infants and young children takes place in the most populous Arab country, and infants in orphanages and babies of street girls are at the highest risk of being trafficked, often to infertile couples.
• But there is also no practical legal mechanism for families - Christian or Muslim - to adopt children in Egypt, and Egyptians rarely gain guardianship of children not born to their families because of social, religious and legal strictures.

Source: Agencies