Nairobi News

NewsWhat's Hot

Kenyan woman assaulted in Lebanon to be deported


Lebanese general security directorate has ordered that a Kenyan woman who was assaulted by an army official be deported.

According to British newspaper The Guardian, the directorate issued a deportation order against one of the women only identified as Shamila.

Nermine Sibai, a lawyer representing the two Kenyan women (Shamila and Rosa), said she had been barred from seeing Shamila ahead of the case’s hearing set for Wednesday.

Salim Jreissati, Lebanon’s justice minister, had termed the attack that was filmed as “shocking” and “abhorrently racist and different from the Lebanon people’s manners”.

REQUEST IGNORED

He had asked the general security agency to “settle the two women’s residency status,” a request that appears to have been ignored.

Amnesty International through a tweet on its Arabic account wrote; “The public security decision to deport the Kenyan woman who was brutally assaulted in Burj Hammoud reflects the injustice suffered by female migrant domestic workers. We call on public Security and the Ministry of Justice to stop their deportation, protect their rights to a lawyer and attend court.”

In the assault video shared online, the two women sitting on the ground receive blows and kicks from the well-built man. Moments later, other members of the public join in to beat up the women.

ASSAULTER LET GO

According to Middle East Eye, the two women were arrested and their assaulter let go by the police who arrived at the scene.

The publication added that later the women filed complaints of assault and battery that prompted the justice minister’s directive to have the women’s residency status settled.

Lebanon’s Daily Star wrote that the army had issued a statement that read in part; “the two women who were drunk assaulted an army member who was with his wife, and hit him with a bottle on his head.”