U.S. doctor, Jumana Nagarwala, who has been arrested and charged with carrying out female genital mutilation on young girls, is being kept behind bars pending trial after a judge found her ties to Kenya and India a signal of risk that she could attempt to flee the country.
Dr Nagarwala was arrested last week while boarding a flight to Kenya to visit two of her children who are enrolled in a boarding school in Nairobi, according to court papers.
Prosecutors said on Thursday that Dr Nagarwala, 44, had been performing female gender mutilation on girls between the age of six and eight for 12 years.
If found guilty, she faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Dr Nagarwala has two children living with her in the U.S. and two older children in a boarding school in Nairobi. Her cousins and husband’s family live in India, where her husband owns two homes, one which is for rent.
She was apparently unaware that she was under FBI investigation when arrested, intending to make a long-planned visit to her children in Nairobi. Her attorney denied that she was attemping to flee the country.
US Magistrate Judge Mona Majzoub denied bail to Dr Nagarwala.
Dr Nagarwala’s attorney maintained that the defendant did not actually cut the genitals of two seven-year-old girls in February, as prosecutors allege.
The doctor instead removed membrane from the girls’ genitals, the attorney said. Dr Nagarwala wrapped the membrane in gauze and gave it to the girls’ parents for burial in keeping with a religious custom of an Indian Muslim community know as the Dawoodi Bohra.
