An Aswan court has sentenced a three-year-old to one year in prison with hard labor in absentia for killing a woman by running her over, in another identity mix-up incident in Egypt’s courts.
According to privately owned Al-Shorouk, Mohamed Hagag was mistakenly handed down the prison sentence because his father, who appears to be the true perpetrator, had registered his car in his son’s name.
Despite Hagag’s lawyer saying that, according to the law, a child cannot be imprisoned, the child was handed down the one-year sentence and his bail was set at EGP 500.
Hagag’s case is similar to that of 4-year-old Ahmed Karni, who recently made local and international headlines after being sentence to life in prison for murder, vandalism and threatening public institutions.
While the crimes did indeed occur, Karni had not yet celebrated his 2nd birthday when the events in question happened.
In statements to the media, the Ministry’s spokesperson said that the four-year-old had been cleared in 2015 after investigators discovered that the name had been misspelled. Instead of the toddler, police had meant to list his uncle Ahmed Korani Ali.
According to this statement, which was also repeated on Dream TV following an interview with the child’s father, the uncle is the man who is wanted and will stand a retrial once caught (since sentences in absentia are retried when the individual is caught).
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