Sources: Suspects arrested after alleged kidnapping, assault of 3 South Sudanese children

Three men and one woman alleged to have participated in the kidnapping and assault of three South Sudanese migrants — a 14-year-old boy and two girls aged 16 and 17 —  in the Ain Shams area last Thursday were referred to the Public Prosecution this week, two sources from the Cairo district’s South Sudanese community told Mada Masr. 

Both Pastor Markos Deng, a prominent figure in Egypt’s South Sudanese refugee community, and a volunteer for the Refugees’ Platform in Egypt who spoke to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity, said that the 14-year-old boy’s family have fled their home after receiving threats from the family of one of the accused and are currently seeking new housing. 

According to the volunteer and Deng — who said that violence and discrimination against the South Sudanese community in Cairo is common — the family have been unable to secure help from several Cairo-based non-governmental organizations thus far. Mada Masr reached out for comment from the family of the victim to corroborate the information, but they did not respond by the time of publishing. 

The three children, and a fourth girl who managed to flee, were traveling home in a tuk tuk in the early hours of Thursday morning after attending a relative’s birthday party, Deng and the volunteer told Mada Masr, when they were pursued by three men. Deng added that the children had been invited to stay at their relative’s overnight but that the 14-year-old boy had to return home before his mother departed for work at 6 am in order to care for his younger siblings.

The assailants then took the three children to a building owned by one of the perpetrators' mothers, said the two sources, where the victims were physically and sexually assaulted. The assailants forcibly shaved one of the girls’ hair, while both girls were stripped of their clothes and sexually assaulted, the sources added. The perpetrators allegedly burned the boy’s skin and forced the three children to clean the house. 

As the children began to shout for help, the assailants locked them in the basement and fled the building. The children were then freed by the neighbors, Deng said, recalling the childrens’ accounts. 

Police arrested the four alleged assailants following the spread of a video on Tik Tok showing the graphic verbal and physical assault, torture and harrassment of the 14-year-old boy on social media over the last few days, Deng and the volunteer told Mada Masr. 

On May 1, the Interior Ministry issued a statement announcing the arrest of suspects accused of bullying and assaulting a young child in an apartment in the Ain Shams area, pointing to a video that had spread on social media. However, the statement did not clarify the nationality of the victim nor mention if their investigations also included the allegations of the assault of the two other girls. 

No official statement had been issued by the public prosecutor by the time this report was published. 

Though the victims’ families did not submit any official complaints, the 14-year-old boy who appeared in the video and his mother were summoned to Ain Shams Police Station where they were interrogated for the whole day, according to Deng and the other source. After the interrogation, the police arrested the three alleged assailants and one of their mothers, who is also the owner of the building in which the assault happened. The four defendants were then referred to the prosecution, said the sources, adding that the police informed the victims’ families of this development. 

After the arrests, one of the families of the alleged perpetrators reportedly harassed and threatened the family of the 14-year-old boy, Deng and the other source told Mada Masr. Accompanied by what the sources described as a “group of thugs,” the family of the perpetrator went to the home of the victim’s family and threatened them, demanding that they withdraw the case, leading the victim’s family to flee their home. 

Seeking support after the assault and threats, the 14-year-old’s mother went to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, said Deng, yet was unable to secure assistance without a scheduled appointment.

Though the sources told Mada Masr that the children are registered at the UNHCR, Mada Masr was not able to verify the legal status of the children concerned. 

The impact of the event on the South Sudanese community has reverberated outside of Egypt, with several activists in South Sudan calling for a protest before the Egyptian embassy in Juba, after which the embassy issued a statement condemning the attack and thanking the Egyptian authorities for taking swift action against the alleged perpetrators. 

Incidents of violence, sexual assault and harassment against refugees in Egypt are increasingly common. “It has become like breakfast, lunch and dinner,” said Deng, describing a break-in at a South Sudanese woman’s apartment in the Ain Shams area last week, in which her possessions were stolen and she and her children were threatened with rape. “We are always hearing about so-and-so tuk tuk guy who hit a Sudanese woman, or a group of thugs assaulting another, or sexual assaults, or racism or robberies.”