Egypt tries man over murder of student who refused advances

A trial began Sunday for an Egyptian man accused of stabbing a woman to death in a public street after she rejected his advances -- a case that has sparked widespread outrage.

A video went viral last week appearing to show the victim, identified as student Nayera Ashraf, being stabbed by a young man outside her university.

The crime has triggered widespread anger both in Egypt and beyond, having been followed a few days later by a similar incident in which Jordanian student Iman Irshaid was shot dead on a university campus.

Social media users immediately drew comparisons between the two murders, decrying cases of femicide in the Arab world.

At the Mansoura Criminal Court, 130 kilometres north of Cairo, Mohamed Adel was accused of "premeditated murder", after confessing to intentionally killing the victim.

Ashraf had previously reported the alleged perpetrator to the authorities, fearing that he would attack her, according to her father and witnesses.

The maximum penalty for murder is death in Egypt, which carried out the third highest number of executions in the world in 2021, according to Amnesty International.

"He stabbed her several times," said the prosecution, which found "messages threatening to cut her throat" on the victim's phone.

On social media, many Jordanian and Egyptian users called for the perpetrator to be sentenced to death, while others said men must "learn to take no for an answer".