Egyptian courts acquitted slave-buying pashas while freeing the enslaved women

Evidence

The slave trial ended with the conviction of the one pasha who had actually confessed to buying one of the slaves. The Bedouin traders were also found guilty and sentenced to five years’ hard labor.The court acquitted the other pashas of all charges, a verdict that the majority of Egyptian newspapers heralded as a national victory. … Zanüba and the other five women walked out of the courtroom free.The Slave Trade Bureau gave them their manumission papers, and they rejoined each other for a time in the Cairo Home for Freed Slaves, where their stay was subsidized by the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 714

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s broader theme of colonial tools — the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society subsidizing freed slaves inside Egypt parallels how antislavery rhetoric was deployed as a colonial instrument.