A senior Egyptian general admitted that "virginity tests" were performed on women arrested at a demonstration in March, the first such confirmation after military authorities previously denied the checks, CNN reported on Tuesday.
The allegations first surfaced in an Amnesty International report, published after the March 9 protests, claiming that female protesters were beaten, given electric shocks, strip-searched, threatened with prostitution charges and forced to have virginity checks.
The general who admitted the tests were conducted, defended the practice saying "The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine. These were girls who had camped out in tents with male protesters in Tahrir Square, and we found in the tents Molotov cocktails and (drugs)."
The general claimed that the virginity tests were conducted so that the women wouldn't try to say later that they had been raped by Egyptian authorities, CNN reported.
