Egyptian singer sentenced to 2 years for racy banana-eating video

An Egyptian female pop singer was convicted Tuesday of promoting debauchery with a racy video clip and sentenced to two years in prison.

A Cairo court also ordered Shaimaa Ahmed, better known by her stage name Shyma, to pay a fine of 10,000 pounds (about $560).

Shyma appears in the video in her underwear singing while suggestively eating an apple and a banana before a classroom of young men.

The video created a stir on social media in conservative and Muslim-majority Egypt and was discussed on TV talk shows.

The verdict by the court of misdemeanors can be appealed.

Shyma was arrested last month over the video, in which the hitherto little-known singer appears in a mock classroom licking an apple and appearing to mimic fellatio on a banana in front of a chalkboard scrawled with “Class #69” and the letters “vag.”

“Singer Shyma presents a lesson in depravity to youths,” thundered the Youm 7 newspaper in an article after the video was released.

In a Facebook posting last month, Shyma wrote that she had not anticipated the backlash against her video.

“I apologize to all the people who saw the clip and were upset by it and took it in an inappropriate way,” she wrote.

“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 dreamed from a young age of being a singer,” she added.

Her arrest came amid a crackdown by authorities under President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi on some artists in Egypt using wide-ranging morality laws.