Anti-Slavery Trial in Cairo, 1894

From: The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean World

The Graphic. Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library.

In August 1894, Ali Pasha Cherif, president of the Egyptian Legislative Council; Shawarbi Pasha, a prominent member of the council; Hussein Pasha Wacyf, a retired general; four slave dealers; and two brokers were tried in Cairo. The dealers had introduced six Sudanese women despite the abolition of the slave trade and had sold them to the three men. The Egyptian authorities acquitted the two pashas because they had merely bought, not traded in, captives; and after Ali Pasha Cherif confessed and asked for clemency, the proceedings against him were stopped. The sellers were sentenced to long jail terms.