Robert Fisk: "Honour" killings in Egypt are disguised as "suicides..."

There's a sewer outside Azza Suleiman's office, a hot ditch in which the filth of one of Cairo's worst slums has been reduced to a slowly moving swamp of black liquid. A blue mist of exhaust fumes and dust moves down alleyways thick with scarved women, men in white robes, coffee sellers, donkey carts and garbage boys, the five- and six-year-olds who come down from the Mokkatam hills to gather up Cairo's garbage every morning. Some of it feeds their goats and – yes – the pigs bred in the rotting suburbs. A veil of smog lies over this misery. But a veil of a different kind lies over Egypt, a covering which Azza Suleiman is determined to tear away.

Officially, Egypt has no "honour" killings. Young women may commit suicide, yes, but they are never murdered. This is the government line – and of course, it is a lie. The files in Azza Suleiman's Centre for Egyptian Women's Legal Assistance office – and in those of other NGOs in Cairo – tell the truth. In May of 2007, a farmer in southern Egypt decapitated his daughter after discovering she had a boyfriend. In March of 2008, a man identified only as "Mursi" electrocuted and beat to death his 17-year-old daughter because she had received a phone call from her boyfriend. "Mursi", a farmer from Kafr el-Sheikh in the Nile Delta, admitted he "beat her with a large stick" before finishing her off with electric shocks; the murder was only discovered when the body turned up at the local hospital. More...

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