A court in Cairo on Tuesday sentenced an Egyptian pop singer to two years in prison for "inciting debauchery" over a racy music video clip, a judicial source said. Shyma, a little-known 21-year-old singer, was also fined 10,000 pounds ($560). The director of the clip, Mohamed Gamal, received the same sentence. Both can appeal the ruling. Shyma was arrested on November 18, police said, following complaints about the video for her song "I Have Issues".
In the video, she appears in a mock classroom licking an apple and appearing to mimic fellatio on a banana in front of a chalkboard scrawled with "Class No. 69". "Singer Shyma presents a lesson in depravity to youths," said the Youm 7 newspaper in an article after the video was released. In a Facebook post at the time, Shyma apologised for the video and said she had not anticipated the backlash.
"I didn't imagine all this would happen and that I would be subjected to such a strong attack from everyone, as a young singer... who has dreamt from a young age of being a singer," she wrote. The authorities under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi have cracked down on some artists in Egypt using wide-ranging morality laws. In 2015, a court jailed a female dancer to a year in prison for "inciting debauchery" in a raunchy music video for a song called "Let Go of My Hand".