Texas Woman Takes Minor Girl Abroad For Genital Mutilation, Charged

A 39-year-old woman from Houston has been charged with allegedly taking a girl abroad to undergo female genital mutilation in 2016.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas announced Wednesday that Zahra Badri was slapped with a federal indictment this week for “knowingly transporting a minor from the United States in foreign commerce for the purpose of FGM (Female Genital Mutilation)," the New York Daily News reported.

The Texas incident is said to have happened sometime between July and October 2016, but the prosecutors have not released any other details. The victim’s age and relationship to the suspect are also unclear.

The country to which the girl was taken was not revealed by the prosecutors. A Reuters report said Badri could be from the Dawoodi Bohra community, a Shia Muslim sect from South Asia.

The Bohra community practice Type 1 FGM, wherein the clitoral glans are partially or totally removed. This ritual is known as khatna or khafd, and is considered a religious obligation

The practice is commonly linked to African countries. The World Health Organization terms FGM as a cultural and religious practice that aims to curb a woman’s sexuality with the notion that “girls are clean and beautiful after removal of body parts that are considered unclean, unfeminine or male."

The indictment comes a week after President Donald Trump signed a law against the ritual by doubling the maximum jail sentence to 10 years from five.

“This indictment demonstrates that we will not rest in pursuing and holding to account those who engage in this cruelty,” David Burns, head of the justice department’s criminal division, said in a statement.

He added the brutal practice of female genital mutilation subjects victims to the immediate trauma of the violent act, and leads to a lifetime of physical and psychological harms.

In 2016, the Australian Supreme Court convicted three people of the Bohra community for female genital mutilation in a landmark trial. The case came to light in 2012 when the Department of Community Services in New South Wales received an anonymous tip-off. The state police investigation found that the two sisters -- then aged six and seven -- had been circumcised in two separate incidents, in Sydney and Wollongong, sometime between October 2010 and July 2012.