Egypt: Actress sued for showing entire legs at Cairo film festival; charges dropped later

Cairo, Dec 5: In India, we are familiar with women celebrities wearing revealing dresses on grand occasions but now an actress in Egypt has found herself in trouble for wearing something that saw her being sued on charges with public obscenity. Rania Youssef, the actress, however appealed that her dress was not meant to offend anybody.

Youssef, in her mid-40s, was attending the closing ceremony of a film festival in the Egyptian capital last week in the black ensemble which raised eyebrows. In a post on Facebook over the weekend, Rania said she might have misjudged how people would react to her dress that showed her entire legs. She also said that she had referred to fashion designers before opting for the dress and that the designers might have been influenced by the practices followed at international film festivals.

She said her commitment to the values and ethics of the Egyptian society in which she was raised remained intact.

A group of lawyers filed a complaint against Rania to the chief prosecutor who referred the case to trial. The charges were later dropped after her public apology, said reports.

Egypt, which was known for its liberal values in the past, has seen religious conservatism gaining hold. The Muslim-majority nation saw the military overthrowing a democratically elected but divisive president in Mohammed Morsi with the then army chief Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi becoming the new president. The Sissi era saw the country reversing some gains made by a 2011 uprising that saw the end of Hosni Mubarak's rule lasting almost three decades.