An Egyptian blogger has been sentenced to three years in prison with hard labour for claiming on national television that 30% of wives would cheat on their husbands if they had the chance, reports Mailonline. The blogger, Taymour el-Sobki was charged for ‘spreading false news’. The court in Egypt claims that el-Sobki’s comments could “harm public peace and damage the public interest.”
El-Sobki faced a backlash from other TV talk show hosts and civilians who filed complaints to public prosecutors accusing him of insulting Egyptian women.
El-Sobki had stated: “Many women cheat on their husbands. I can say that 30 percent of women are ready to be deviant”.
In particular, he claimed, women in the southern cities of ‘Asyut, Minya, Sohag, Qena, Luxor and Aswan’. El-Sobki, whose Facebook page called ‘Diaries of a Suffering Husband’ has more than one million followers, added: ‘Many women are involved in extramarital affairs while their husbands are abroad.’
His comments included the suggestion that arranged marriages in traditional southern Egypt exacerbated the problem of infidelity because women ended up with men they didn’t know.
After the claim a masked man from the region appeared in a video carried on YouTube armed with an assault rifle, and issued a death threat against El-Sobki. However, the court’s decision has been condemned by human rights groups.
“We can criticize or reject the comments he made, but he did not commit a crime,’ said prominent rights lawyer Gamal Eid.
