Egyptians expressed their shock at the barbarity of the crimes in many ways. According to this story, a rumour spread in the latter half of December 1920 that Raya and Sakina were on display in the Zoo. Although, of course, the rumour was totally unfounded, Al-Ahram remarked that the rumour itself indicated that the Egyptian people not only wished to strip Raya and Sakina of their qualities as women, but also as human beings. The lengthy trial, too, attracted considerable commentary. Al-Ahram wrote that the Egyptian justice system had never seen a case of this sort.
Murder is an ordinary crime in the history of mankind.
If it is premeditated our sense of abhorrence is relative to our ability to comprehend the motives that led the criminal to commit the act. The case of Raya and Sakina, however, was in a class of its own. Their crime has exceeded all bounds of human nature and rational behaviour to reach a level of barbarism and savagery of unbridled evil. Abdel-Aal and Sakina on their wedding day Raya and Sakina inspired the pens of prominent writers of the time. As the title suggests, his article involved an analysis of the pictures of the two criminals, which brings us first to an interesting footnote.