Guinean couple charged in France for genital mutilation

A couple of Guinean orgin went on trial here Tuesday accused of carrying out what France considers genital mutilation on their four daughters, but some Africans view as a traditional practice.

The parents, charged with "complicity in wilful violence", face up to 20 years in prison, since the fact that their daughters were minors at the time of the procedure known as female circumcision was considered an aggravating circumstance.

They arrived in the Nevers court in central France with their two eldest daughters, now adults, and were joined later by the two youngest, aged 11 and 13, who had asked to return home after a temporary placement elsewhere.

The affair came to light in 2005 when the mutilation of the eldest girl was discovered in a Nevers hospital, where she was being operated on for appendicitis. (...)