Cairo - A court sentenced an Egyptian man to one year in jail for sexually assaulting two women in Cairo, a judicial source said on Monday.
At least 34 men had been arrested after they cornered two women in an affluent Cairo neighbourhood and sexually assaulted them, ripping of their clothes.
The women have not pressed charges, but the court said it "was satisfied by eye-witness accounts and the prosecution's investigation" to convict 19-year-old Islam Magdi, state news agency MENA reported.
Another suspect, a 17-year-old, faces trial on the same charges.
Such convictions were relatively rare in Egypt, which does not have a law defining sexual harassment, but a court in October sentenced a man to three years in jail for groping a woman.
Women's rights activists welcomed that ruling and said it was unprecedented in Egypt.
The Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights (ECWR) issued a survey this summer saying 83 percent of Egyptian women and 98 percent of foreign women in Egypt had experienced sexual harassment.
The study said only 12 percent of the 2 500 women who reported cases of sexual harassment to ECWR went to the police with their complaint. - AFP
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