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The former midwife has been convicted of performing the female circumcision

Sydney — Two women became the first people convicted in Australia for carrying out female genital mutilation yesterday, news reports said.

The women — a mother aged 38 a nurse aged 72 — were found guilty of mutilating the clitorises of two sisters aged seven and six.

They were part of a religious sect called Dawoodi Bohra, a Shia Islamic group with about a million followers around the world who mostly live in India and Pakistan.

The Australian leader of the sect, Sheik Shabbir Mohammedbhai Vaziri, 59, was found guilty of being an accessory after the fact to the illegal procedure, broadcaster ABC and the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported.

The young girls told police about the mutilation performed on them two years after the event.

Police tapped the phones of the sect and found they planned to send other girls from Australia to India to be cut.

The three were ordered to surrender their passports and were released on bail pending sentencing at a later date. — AFP