On Monday, a judge in Beirut sentenced a 32-year-old Lebanese man who attempted to rape his neighbor's wife to five years of hard labor, according to the National News Agency (NNA).
The attacker, identified as A.A., broke into his neighbor's rooftop apartment in Clemenceau while the husband of the female victim was away.
At the time of the incident, the woman was with her child and screamed the moment she encountered the intruder, which prompted him to run back to his house.
As soon as the victim's Syrian husband, identified as 29-year-old I.M., returned home, he was informed of the assault and subsequently attacked the aggressor with a cleaver, NNA reports.
The Syrian husband also received a six-month jail sentence for attacking and injuring the suspected predator. The latter was hospitalized and left with serious injuries.
Lebanon and other Arab countries abolish laws protecting rapists
In August 2017, Lebanon's parliament repealed Article 522 of the Lebanese penal code which allowed rapists to escape punishment if they marry their victims.
That same month, Jordan's lower house of parliament voted to revoke the controversial Article 308 of the kingdom's penal code, similar to the Lebanese Article 522.
In July 2017, Tunisia amended several laws governing women's rights in the country.
The new laws criminalize sexual harassment in public spaces, ban the employment of children as domestic workers, and scrap the controversial article that allowed rapists to marry their victims to escape punishment.
