News: 72 y.o man arrested at Heathrow Airport with an 11 y.o girl on flight from Uganda

Two people have been arrested for conspiracy to commit female genital mutilation (FGM).

A 72-year-old man was stopped by police at Heathrow Airport yesterday morning after arriving with an 11-year-old girl on a flight from Kampala, Uganda.

Specialist officers took the girl - a UK national - into the care of social services.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: 'Officers acted upon information given and a 40-year-old woman was arrested in Hackney under Section 2 of the FGM Act 2003, namely aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring a girl to carry out FGM on herself.'

The man was arrested on suspicion of the same offence in Newham, east London,  today.

Both suspects have been taken to east London police stations where they remain in custody.

The police spokesman added: 'The Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 makes it illegal to participate in any sort of arrangement for FGM to be performed on another, either inside or outside the UK.'

The arrests come in the wake of news that militant group ISIS may have ordered compulsory FGM for all women and girls in a region of Iraq now under its control.

The extremist group has seized large swathes of the troubled country's northern regions and is now said to be imposing its hardline Sharia rules on the population.

The United Nations expressed deep concern yesterday at reports all girls and women in and around city of Mosul are to being forced to undergo FGM procedures.

It also follows David Cameron's announcement this week that teachers and doctors will be under a legal duty to report if young girls in their care could be sent abroad and forced to marry under new rules.

They could be struck off or disciplined if they fail to tell the authorities about children being spirited abroad and made to marry strangers, or if they ignore concerns a girl may be subject to female genital mutilation.

Parents could be prosecuted if they fail to prevent their daughters being subjected to genital mutilation.

The Prime Minister said that schools had, in the past, been guilty of ‘turning a blind eye’ to the need to protect children at risk.

And he said he wanted his daughters to be able to grow up in a world where the practice was outlawed. 

Mr Cameron made his comments at a major international conference in south London on combating forced marriage and female genital mutilation.

He told the audience: ‘I am a dad with three children – two girls and a boy – and I want my girls to grow up with every opportunity that my son has, with no disadvantage, with the chance to make everything my girls can with their lives.

‘I've told you about my children. So my daughter – my eldest is 10; not that much younger than some of the children who get pushed into childhood or early marriage; not that much younger than girls who get cut and have their lives, in so many ways, taken away from them.

‘And this really is about the world that we want children like my daughter to grow up in. Is it going to be a world where we recognise that these practices are unacceptable, but instead of just saying that, instead of just signing declarations, instead of just passing laws, we actually commit to do everything we can, in our own countries and globally, to outlaw these practices forever.’

The Prime Minister – who had already passed a law making forced marriage a specific criminal offence, also said that he wanted schools to do more to warn and protect children from danger.

Children are vulnerable in schools, he said, which ‘haven’t necessarily understood that these practices are going on and they have turned a blind eye.’

As well as the new rules for parents, teachers and doctors, victims of FGM will be given lifelong anonymity the moment an allegation is made.

Mr Cameron told schools to stop being ‘coy’ about offending cultural sensitivities, and described how some girls were ‘disappearing off the school roll’ and ‘not coming back after the school holidays’.

He added: ‘You read far too many stories about girls being taken on holiday to Turkey, to Pakistan and to India and not coming back and we need to get over that by advertising properly in schools.’

Justice minister Simon Hughes said schools used to be nervous that challenging communities on issues of FGM or forced marriage amounted to “trespassing on a cultural space that was inappropriate” but that had changed in recent years.

‘It is no longer culturally embarrassing in this country challenge people’s beliefs and practices,’ he said.

Unicef warned ahead of the summit that while the rate of FGM and child marriage has fallen over the past three decades, population increase in developing nations alone could reverse this trend if 'intensive action' is not introduced.

It said its research showed that more than 130 million girls and women have experienced some form of FGM in the 29 countries in Africa and the Middle East where it is most common.

In addition some 700 million women alive today worldwide were married as children, including more than a third - 250 million - who were married before the age of 15.

Source: DailyMailOnline