A woman who was found guilty of handing over a three-year-old British girl for female genital mutilation (FGM) during a trip to Kenya has been sentenced to seven years in prison.
Amina Noor, 40, was found guilty last year of helping a Kenyan woman undergo surgery abroad in 2006. The conviction marks the first conviction for aiding and abetting such harm under the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003.
Sentencing Noor to seven years at the Old Bailey on Friday, Judge Brian described the crime as “truly horrifying and abhorrent”.
FGM is the partial or complete removal of a woman’s external genitalia and is considered a violation of the rights of women and girls. In 2012, the United Nations passed a resolution People are trying to ban FGM, but it’s actually happening. Still practicing In about 30 countries.
In 2006, 22-year-old Noor traveled to Kenya from Harrow, north-west London, with her toddler, where she was taken to a private home and subjected to female genital mutilation.
The crime came to light years later, when the girl, aged 16, confided in her English teacher at school. On Friday, the judge said he hoped her “courage” would encourage others to report incidents. The victim is currently 21 years old, but cannot be identified for legal reasons.
The only successful prosecution under the 2003 law was in 2019, when a Ugandan woman from Walthamstow, east London, was sentenced to 11 years in prison for mutilating a three-year-old girl.
The court heard the defendant said he thought the procedure was just an injection and said afterwards that the girl was “happy and able to run around and play”. However, an examination of the girl in 2019 revealed that her clitoris had been removed.
According to early testimony, Noor described going to a “clinic” with another woman, where the girl was called into a room for treatment. The defendant said she was invited but she declined because she was “scared and worried.” After that, she said the girl cried all night and complained of her pain.
Jurors were told that the defendant was born in Somalia and moved to Kenya at the age of eight during Somalia’s civil war. She came to the UK when she was 16 years old and later she obtained British citizenship.
Giving evidence in court, Noor said she was threatened with being “cursed” and “disowned” within the community if she did not participate in FGM. In subsequent careful police interrogation, Noor denied that anyone had threatened her before the girl’s attack.
Fatih Kane, senior girls’ rights adviser at ActionAid UK, welcomed Friday’s judgment. She said: “It pains her to hear that young girls, let alone girls as young as three, are being subjected to acts of violence like this.
“In the communities we work with, including in Kenya, we have seen that FGM/C can have severe lifelong physical, psychological and social effects on girls and women. We can only hope that today’s sentence not only brings justice to the survivor, but also helps her cope with the trauma and pain it has caused,” Mr Kane said.
