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By Ahlam Ben Saga
Rabat – After she was banned from singing in Egypt for “mocking” the Nile River, Egyptian Pop singer Sherine Abdel Wahab is now sentenced to six months imprisonment and fined for “insulting Egypt.”
On Tuesday, February 27, the Egyptian Moqattam Misdemeanor Court sentenced famous Egyptian Pop singer, Sherine Abdel Wahab, known to her fans as “Sherine,” to six months in jail for “insulting Egypt” with scornful remarks about Nile River, reported Egypt Independent News outlet.
The court also ordered Sherine to pay a fine of 5,000 EGP.
In November 2017, a storm of outrage engulfed social media after a video was shared on Twitter. It showed Sherine making a joke at one of her concerts about Egypt’s Nile river when her audience requested her to sing her famous song “Mashrebtesh Men Nilha” (translation: “Have You Not Drunk from [Egypt’s] Nile”).
During the twelve seconds segment of the video, Sherine quipped: “You’ll get bilharzia [translation: schistosomiasis] if you drink from [Egypt’s] Nile.”She then suggested that her audience drink Evian, a bottled mineral water brand. “It is better,” she said.
While some Egyptian people criticized Sherine and vowed to stop listening to her songs, others supported and defended her.The video became a sensational subject, and the Egyptian Musicians Syndicate banned Sherine from singing for “insulting” her motherland.
The Egyptian Ministry of Health responded to Sherine’s remark in the video, stating that it has long combated the parasitic disease that once plagued Egypt, and “reduced its prevalence to 0.2 percent,” reported the news outlet Egypt Today .
Sherine apologized for her remarks, claiming that the video was recorded during her concert in the UAE city of Sharjah the previous year, and that her uttering such statements had been erased altogether from her memory.
