Egyptian-US couples jailed over illegal Egypt adoption

Sep 17, 2009, 15:30 GMT

Cairo - A Cairo court sentenced two Egyptian-US couples Thursday to two years in prison for 'child trafficking for the purpose of adoption and sending them abroad,' in an illegal adoption case involving 11 defendants and four Egyptian babies.

The couples, Iris Botros and her husband Louis Andraos, Suzanne Hagolf and her husband Medhat Metyas, were trying to adopt children from an orphanage that provided them with false documents that certified that the children were their own, the court found.

The manager of the orphanage Mariam Ragheb, banker Gameel Bakhit as well as gynaecologist George Saad Ghali were sentenced to five years and were also fined 100,000 Egyptian pounds (around 18,150 dollars) each.

The defendants, who went on trial last May, have been in detention for the duration of the trial.

Another couple, Josephine Girgues and her husband Atef Roushdi, are believed to have escaped the country and were sentenced to two years in jail in absentia and were fined 100,000 Egyptian pounds each.

The case came to light last December after Botros and her husband approached the US embassy in Cairo to take their two adopted babies out of Egypt.

Adoption is not allowed under Islamic law as families are forbidden to give their names to the children they foster, to ensure lines of patrimony and inheritance.