Immigrant faces 6 years jail for genital mutilation carried out on daughter before she moved to Spain

SPAIN’S National High Court is being asked to jail an immigrant from Mali for six years for ‘allowing’ the genital mutilation (female circumcision) of her daughter two years before she moved to Spain. 

The court heard that the woman arrived in Spain legally with her daughter and two other children in 2012 to be reunited with her husband who had lived here since 2004. 

By 2018 they all lived in the town of Baralla (Lugo) and on November 21 of that year their daughter, D.D., born on November 17, 2010, was examined at a health centre, where it was found that she had undergone genital mutilation. 

It was also recognised that the wounds were fully healed and would have happened soon after birth, as was the custom in her home country. 

The Public Prosecutor argues that in spite of knowing this custom and the reality that such mutilations are carried out on newborn girls, the woman did not take adequate precautionary measures with respect to her daughter and in this way, shortly after birth, genital mutilation was practiced in Mali.