In Egypt, the Grand Mufti must ratify a death sentence as a legal formality [Getty]
The fate of a convicted serial killer will be finally decided on September 12 after a criminal court in Cairo forwarded his file to the country's Grand Mufti, Dr. Nazir Ayyad, for final review.
On Saturday, August 24, an Egyptian judge found 37-year-old Karim Selim guilty of murdering three women after drugging and torturing them to death, crimes that have sent shockwaves across the Arab world's most populous country in recent months.
In Egypt, a criminal court must seek final approval from the Grand Mufti, who issues fatwas (religious decrees) as a legal formality in cases of a death sentence. However, the sentence can still be appealed to a higher court.
Selim was also found guilty of performing unusual sexual acts on the bodies of his victims and filming the process in a soundproof room designed for this purpose in his home in the upscale Fifth Settlement neighborhood near Cairo.
Dubbed the “Fifth Settlement Killer” by local news agencies, Selim admitted during interrogation that the true number of his victims was greater than the number of victims authorities had already discovered.
The women's bodies were found individually, each naked, in deserted areas in provinces outside Cairo. Selim admitted that he knew his victims online and that some of them were sex workers.
Autopsy reports suggested that all three women had been killed by the same perpetrator, as they all showed similar signs of torture, including wounds from strangulation and whipping.
Evidence against Selim included a fingerprint on one of the women's clothes. Laboratory tests of their stomach and blood components also indicated signs of narcotics in their bodies.
Local news outlets reported that Selim came from a wealthy family and graduated from Egypt's most prestigious private university, the American University in Cairo (AUC). He later worked as a teacher at an international school before quitting his job. He then created a TikTok channel where he taught American English.
As part of the #MeToo movement, women across Egypt have spoken out about sexual crimes on social media in recent years.
In 2017, Cairo was ranked “the world’s most dangerous megacity for women” in a Reuters poll. According to a UN survey published in 2015, around 7.8 million Egyptian women are victims of gender-based violence every year.
