The US Justice Department has moved to stop the deportation of a Mali woman who has suffered genital mutilation.

Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, a former federal judge, threw out a decision by an arm of the Justice Department denying asylum to a 28-year-old woman from Mali who has already undergone genital mutilation.

First in September last year the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals turned down the unidentified woman’s plea for asylum. Then in April this year a Justice Department panel refused a request for reconsideration, inviting criticism from immigration and refugee groups and medical ethicists.

The board’s rationale was that because the woman had already been mutilated, she no longer had a legitimate fear of further persecution!

Under U.S. law such a possibility must exist for asylum to be granted.

In Monday's six-page order Attorney General Mukasey said the Board’s decision was replete with "legal and factual errors.”

"To begin with, the board based its analysis on a false premise: that female genital mutilation is a 'one-time' act that cannot be repeated on the same women," he wrote. "As several courts have recognized, female genital mutilation is indeed capable of repletion."

He cited a case where an asylum applicant's vaginal opening was sewn shut five times after being opened to allow for sexual intercourse and childbirth, Los Angeles Times reported.

"The board was wrong to focus on whether the future harm to life or freedom that [the applicant] feared would take the 'identical' form," he added.