Who Is Leila Amer? Second Egyptian Pop Singer Jailed Over Sexual Music Video

Egyptian pop singer Leila Amer was arrested and jailed for four days over “debauchery” charges that can be used in Egypt against predominately female artists and musicians for "sexually suggestive" material.

Leila Amer appeared in an online video called "Boss Oumek" or "Look at your mother," in its English translation. Released last week, the video was deemed "an attack on society" by Egyptian prosecutors, according to AFP. Amer's video shows a belly dancer being watched on television by a fidgety man while she makes supposedly sexual gestures with her hands to entice him into the song. She was jailed for four days after the music video was deemed an "incitement to debauchery."

Much of the video shows Amer caught between the man and an older woman, that appears to be her mother, as she struggles to prepare a meal and dry her laundry.

Ahmed Mahran, the lawyer who filed the "great risk" complaint against her, took a hard-line conservative stance on the music video's supposedly lewd content. He appealed to the country's Islamic values to ridicule the singer. Hany Shaker, president of the Musicians' Union, announced last week that Amer had been expelled from the union.

“These works represent an attack on society and the destruction of the state, it being an Islamic country,” Mahran told the Telegraph.

This comes less than one month after Egyptian singer Shyma was arrested under debauchery laws for eating a banana in a music video.

Shaimaa Ahmed, 24, is known professionally as Shyma and received massive backlash for “suggestively” eating a banana in front of a classroom full of young men. She was reportedly ordered to pay a fine equivalent to $560 USD over the act.