Woman convicted of taking British girl, 3, to Kenya for female genital mutilation

A woman has been found guilty of handing over a three-year-old British girl for female genital mutilation (FGM) during a trip to Kenya in a legal first.

After a trial at the Old Bailey, Amina Noor, 39, was convicted of assisting a non-UK person to carry out the procedure overseas 17 years ago.

This is the first conviction of its kind under the Female Genital Mutilation Act of 2003 and carries a maximum sentence of 14 years.

To date, the only other successful prosecution was in 2019 when a Ugandan woman from Walthamstow, east London, was jailed for 11 years for cutting a three-year-old girl.

The senior crown prosecutor Patricia Strobino hailed Noor’s conviction saying: “This kind of case will hopefully encourage potential victims and survivors of FGM to come forward, safe in the knowledge that they are supported, believed and also are able to speak their truth about what’s actually happened to them.

“It will also send a clear message to those prospective defendants or people that want to maintain this practice that it doesn’t matter whether they assist or practise or maintain this practice within the UK, or overseas, they are likely to be prosecuted.”

Strobino added: “Part of the challenge of this type of offence is the fact that these types of offences occur in secrecy.

“Within specific communities within the UK, although these offences and practices are prevalent, it is often very difficult to get individuals to come forward to explain the circumstances of what’s happened to them because there was a fear that they may be excluded or pushed away or shunned, isolated from their community.”

Previously, the prosecutor Deanna Heer KC said Noor had travelled to Kenya with the girl in 2006 and while there took her to a private house where the child was subjected to FGM.

The crime only came to light years later when the girl was 16 and confided in her English teacher at school.

When spoken to, the defendant said she thought the procedure was just an injection and afterwards the girl was “happy and able to run around and play”. But when examined in 2019, it emerged that the girl’s clitoris had been completely removed.

Noor appeared “shocked and upset” and said that was not what she thought was going to happen. According to an initial account, Noor described going with another woman to a “clinic” where the girl was called into a room for a procedure.

The defendant said she was invited in but refused because she was “scared and worried”. Afterwards, the girl appeared quiet and cried the whole night and complained of pain, according to the account.

In a later police interview under caution, Noor denied that anyone had made threats against her before FGM was done to the girl.

Heer said: “She was asked whether, when she arrived at the clinic or even before then, she felt she did not want it to happen. She said: ‘Yeah I thought about it but then, you know, got it done.’”

Jurors were told the defendant was born in Somalia and moved to Kenya at the age of eight during the civil war in Somalia. She was 16 when she came to the UK and was later granted British citizenship.

The defendant described what had been done to the girl as “Sunnah”, meaning “tradition” or “way” in Arabic, and said it was a practice that had gone on for cultural reasons for many years.

Giving evidence in her trial, Noor, from Harrow, in north-west London, said she was threatened with being “cursed” and “disowned” within her community if she did not take part. She told jurors the threat gave her “pain”, adding: “That was a pressure I had no power to do anything about.”

The alleged victim, who is now 21, cannot be identified for legal reasons.