Man Jailed in Sweden for FGM Of His Daughter

On Monday 26th June, 2006, A Swedish court jailed a Somali man for the Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) of his 13 year old daughter. The guilty verdict has led to four years imprisonment and a payment to his daughter of 346, 000 kronor, equivalent to £26, 000.

The case dates back to March when Swedish citizen Ali Elmi Hayow was detained and charged with unlawful dispossession of a child and for having her undergo Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). He initially denied the charges, claiming that he and his ex-wife had settled on a custody arrangement and that he was opposed to the practice of FGM.

His daughter, also a Swedish citizen, was taken to Mogadishu and held against her will for several years. With the aid of a reporter from the radio station Voice of Democracy in Mogadishu she appealed to the Swedish embassy in Addis Ababa. The Swedish embassy contacted the social authorities in Sweden and made her mother, in London, her legal guardian to obtain a passport.

The mother claims that the FGM was carried out in 2001 and evidence from the daughter reports that, “He [her father] decided that the girl should be circumcised and together with another person kept a firm hold of her while a circumciser performed the operation.”

The case was the first in its kind, regarding female genital mutilation in a Scandinavian country. Swedish law has outlawed the practice in Sweden since 1982 and this law was amended in 1999 to include the prohibition of taking children abroad for the procedure.

Read the full BBC report about the case here.