Human Rights Cases In Egypt

Human Rights Cases In Egypt - 2008-2009

Cases of harrassment, torture, imprisonment, assault and religious persecution in Egypt:

January 29, 2009 - (Compass Direct News) - Following a brutal raid on six Christian brothers and their café because they had opened for business during Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, a judge on Jan. 22 sentenced them to three years in prison with hard labor for resisting arrest and assaulting authorities. Click here to read more.

January 23, 2009 - (Advocates For The Persecuted) - A mother of two young children, who converted from Islam to Christianity remains imprisoned after being arrested while trying to flee Egypt with her Christian husband. Click here to read more.

January 13, 2009 - (Compass Direct News) – An attempt by an Egyptian convert from Islam to legally change the religion listed on his identification card to “Christian” hit a setback on Jan. 6 when a judge ordered security personnel to remove his lawyer from court. Attorney Nabil Ghobreyal was expelled from the courtroom at Cairo’s Administrative Court following a heated argument with Judge Mohammad Ahmad Atyia. Click here to read more.

January 8, 2009 - (Compass Direct News) – An Egyptian convert to Christianity who spent 31 years officially identified as a Muslim has won a rare legal victory to be officially registered in his “new” faith. Click here to read more.

December 30, 2008 – Egyptian authorities arrested a Muslim convert to Christianity, along with her Christian husband and two young sons, December 13th, as the couple was attempting to flee the country following five years of persecution. Click here to read more.

December 19, 2008 - (Compass Direct News) - Egyptian authorities have refused to hand over a 3-year-old girl to her Christian mother even after a court granted her custody in a legal battle with her Muslim ex-husband. Click here to read more.

December 2, 2008: (Compass Direct News) – A Supreme Court judge in Egypt on Nov. 22 granted Christian Bahia El-Sisi the right to appeal her conviction for falsification of documents – a charge stemming from her official papers not identifying her as a Muslim. In addition, Judge Abdel Meged Mahmood on Nov. 25 rescinded a Sept. 23 warrant for El-Sisi’s arrest, declaring that she should be free pending a final decision. Mahmood is the same judge who in January freed El-Sisi’s sister, who had been convicted on the same charges of “forgery.” Click here to read more.

December 1, 2008 - (Compass Direct News) – Two Coptic Christians wrongfully arrested for killing a Muslim during the May 31 attack on Abu Fana monastery in Egypt have been tortured and sent to a detention camp so authorities could try to extract a false confession, their lawyer said. Click here to read more.

November 26, 2008: (Compass Direct News) - Thousands of Muslim protestors on Sunday (Nov. 23) attacked a Coptic church in a suburb of Cairo, Egypt, burning part of it, a nearby shop and two cars and leaving five people injured ... “It was a terrifying moment,” said lawyer Nabil Gobrayel, who was inside the church at the time. “They were shouting ‘holy slogans’ like, ‘We will bring the church down,’ ‘The priest is dead’ and ‘The army of Muhammad is coming.’” Click here to read more.

November 24, 2008: (Compass Direct News) – Egyptian human rights workers are looking to international bodies for support against Muslim judges who use sharia (Islamic law) to undermine custody rights of Christian mothers. Despite provisions such as Egyptian law’s Article 20, which dictates that minors should remain with their mother until age 15, judges consistently rule in favor of Muslim fathers in custody disputes with Christian mothers. Islamist judges typically resort to Article 2 of the Egyptian Constitution, which states that “principles of Islamic law are the principal source of legislation.” Click here to read more.

November 21, 2008: (Compass Direct News) - Authorities in an Egyptian village arrested 50 Coptic Christians, whose shops were then looted, to pacify Muslims following violence that erupted on Nov. 4 over a Christian boy’s unwitting break with custom. Muslim villagers attacked the homes and shops of Coptic Christians in violence-prone Tayyiba, a town with 35,000 Christians and 10,000 Muslims, after 14-year-old Copt Mina William failed to dismount his donkey as a funeral procession passed. Click here to read more.

November 12, 2008: (Human Rights Watch) - Since June 2007, Egyptian border guards have killed at least 32 African migrants trying to cross into Israel, and Israel has forcibly returned at least 139 border crossers to Egypt, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Egypt has detained those returned, not revealed their whereabouts, and reportedly deported some to their home countries where they face a substantial risk of persecution. Click here to read more.

November 4, 2008 (Advocates For The Persecuted) - Egypt's Administrative Court heard the appeal presented by Maher ElMo'tassem Bellah (Peter Athanasius) requesting the Ministry of Interior issue his official identity card and a birth certificate for his daughter with their new Christian religion noted on both documents instead of Islam. Click here to read more.

October 17, 2008: (Christian Newswire) -Having witnessed the horrific and heartless acts of 9/11 along with millions of fellow Americans, author Fawzy T. Abdelmalek felt compelled to share his knowledge and personal experiences growing up as a Christian in a land dominated by an Islamic belief system in his new book, "The Turning Point - Islam and Jesus' Salvation." Click here to read more.

October 10, 2008: (Compass Direct News) – An Egyptian Coptic Christian woman has been sentenced to three years in prison for failing to uphold her Islamic identity – an identity she didn’t know she had for over four decades. Sisters Shadia and Bahia Nagy El-Sisi, both in their late 40s and residents of the small east Delta town Mit-Ghamr, were arrested and tried for claiming their official religious identity as Christian. Unknown to them, their religious identity officially changed 46 years ago due to their father’s brief conversion to Islam. Both are illiterate. Click here to read more.

October 7, 2008: (IFEX) IFEX members welcomed the presidential pardon of a two-month jail sentence against Ibrahim Issa, editor-in-chief of the independent daily "Al-Dustour". Click here to read more.

October 2, 2008: (Compass Direct News) – Following the Appeal Court of Alexandria on Sept. 24 granting custody of 13-year-old Christian twins to their Muslim father, their mother lives with the fear that police will take away her children at any moment. Click here to read more.

September 12, 2008: (Compass Direct News) – Egypt’s most famous convert to Christianity is a prisoner of his own home, hiding for his life. After Mohammed Ahmed Hegazy, 25, became the first Muslim-born Egyptian to file a case a year ago for his identification card to reflect his newfound faith, his face has been shown on TV channels and newspapers. Anywhere he goes, he might be recognized by fanatical Islamists bent on killing him – besides his own family members, who also want him dead. Click here to read more.

August 23, 2008: (Advocates For The Persecuted) - Egyptian human rights attorney Nabil Ghobreyal has coined a new name for the Committee of Islamic Researchers in Egypt. He calls them the "Inquisition Courts of the Middle Ages," after they issued a decision to forbid the distribution of the book, Disdaining of a Heavenly Religion!!, published in January 2007. Click here to read more.

August 7, 2008: (Compass Direct News) – One year after the first attempt by an Egyptian Muslim convert to Christianity to change his religious identity, another convert this week became the second to make such a controversial legal request. After 34 years of practicing Christianity, 56-year-old Maher Ahmad El-Mo’otahssem Bellah El-Gohary filed a case at the State Council Court on Monday (August 4) to replace the word “Muslim” on his identification card with “Christian.” Click here to read more.

July18, 2008: (Human Rights Watch) - Egypt should immediately release six men who have been detained for more than 90 days without charge since their arrests following a workers strike and street protests in Mahalla al-Kobra in April, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch also called on authorities to suspend the prosecution of 49 others by a security court where procedures violate fair trial rights and to investigate allegations that some of the men were tortured. Click here to read more.

July 16, 2008: (OneNewsNow) Coptic Christians from Egypt who live in the U.S. are spending part of their day conducting a peaceful demonstration at the White House. Click here to read more.

July 10, 2008: Christian Newswire -- Coptic Organizations in America along with activists from Egypt, the Middle East, Europe and the United states, will conduct a peaceful demonstration in front of the White House on Wednesday July 16, 2008, from 12:00 noon to 4:00 pm. The purpose is to convey, to world's opinion and international human rights organizations, recent incidents of persecution, discrimination and marginalization inflicted on Coptic Christians of Egypt by the Egyptian government and Muslim extremists. Click here to read more.

June 22, 2008: (Free Copts) Barely a few weeks after the attacks on the Abu Fana monastery in El-Menya, Coptic homes and businesses in the village of Al Nazla, in the Fayoum province south of Cairo were attacked by their Muslim neighbors. The attackers shouted “Allah Akbar” and “Kill the infidels” as they hurled stones at their Christian neighbors’ homes. Click here to read more.

June 21, 2008: (Yahoo News) Police arrested 20 people when hundreds of Egyptian Muslims attacked Coptic Christian property after a woman who converted to Islam went missing, a security official said on Saturday. Click here to read more.

June 19, 2008: (Assist News) Four hundred Eritrean refugees deported recently by Egypt face torture, prison and even execution on returning to Eritrea ... The Washington, D.C.- based human rights group, International Christian Concern (ICC), reported the June 11 and 12 deportations in a news release. ICC also received reports of the deportation of additional Eritreans after June 12. Click here to read more.

June 18, 2008: (MEMRI) In the wake of the growing tensions between Copts and Muslims in Egypt, which were precipitated by the murder of four Copts in Alexandria and by violent attacks on Copts by Muslims in Upper Egypt, former Jordanian information minister Salah Al-Qallab published an article in which he called for peaceful coexistence between the majority Muslim population and Christian communities in the Middle East. Click here to read more.

June 2, 2008: (Breitbart) A blogger released after weeks behind bars over deadly protests at Egypt's biggest textile plant for higher pay and controls on prices, said Monday he and his fellow detainees suffered weeks of "torture" ... "We were subjected to electric shocks, to beatings and there was no food and or drink for the first few days," blogger Karim el-Beheiri told AFP a day after his release. "We went through weeks of torture and humiliation." Click here to read more.

April 22, 2008: (IFEX) - "The Egyptian authorities have intensified their onslaught on satellite broadcasters and journalists, the latest in a series of attacks against free expression and the free flow of information in a country once at the forefront of press freedom in the Middle East, say IFEX members." Click here to read more.

March 26, 2008: (Compass Direct News) – Christian-born converts to Islam in Egypt wishing to return to their former faith have found their way blocked by an appeal before the country’s Supreme Constitutional Court. Judge Muhammad Husseini asked Egypt’s top judicial body on March 4 to review the constitutionality of a law granting citizens the right to change religions. Click here to read more.

March 18, 2008: (IFEX) Egypt's Supreme Administrative Court began deliberations March 17th to consider the appeal filed by Judge Abdul Fattah Murad against the judgment of the administrative court on December 29, 2007, which supported the freedom of the Internet and freedom of expression in Egypt. Click here to read more.

March 15, 2008: (Advocates For The Persecuted) Egyptian police arrested an Egyptian Christian bookstore employee midday Saturday, confiscating books, compact discs, and issues of a newspaper read by Christians in Egypt. Shenouda Armia Bakhait, who was working in the bookstore at the time police raided the shop, was interrogated for five hours. Click here to read more.

March 7, 2008: (IFEX) One year after blogger Kareem Amer was sent to prison, HRinfo stated that the campaign launched by some independent newspapers has proven that Kareem Amer is innocent of the charge for which he was convicted: insulting the president. Amer was sentenced to one year's imprisonment over an article that reported on an Islamic charity assembly in Damanhour city of Delta, stating that this assembly had described the president of the Republic as the "prince of believers" (like a Khalifa in old Islamic history). Click here to read more.

March 2, 2008: (Reuters) An Egyptian court on Saturday upheld a lower court ruling obliging Egypt's Coptic Christian church to acknowledge an Egyptian man's right to remarry after a civil court granted him a divorce, judicial sources said...Some Egyptian Christians convert to Islam to obtain a divorce, to get married, or to get a second marriage. Click here to read more.

February 23, 2006: (Arabic Network for Human Rights) "Kareem Amer starts today his second year in Burg Al-Arab prison on the four-year imprisonment sentence issued against him by Moharram Beik Court of Misdemeanor, (Alexandria) on February 22, 2007, directly after being arrested on November 6, 2006 on charges of despising religions and insulting the President," the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information and Hisham Mubarak Law Center said today. Click here to read more.

February 20, 2008: (IFEX) Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies strongly condemns the document entitled "Principles regulating Radio and Satellite TV Transmission and Receiving in the Arab Region," adopted by the Council of Arab Information Ministers. CIHRS confirms that the document, disguised by media professional ethics rhetoric, is primarily aimed at providing a fake national and ethical cover to limit the freedom margin exercised by the media outlets in some of the Arab countries. This margin of freedom existed either because of the influence of the global communications and information revolution or internal and external pressures for democracy. Click here to read more.

February 15, 2007: (Arabic Network for Human Rights) The first annual report prepared by the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information on the status of freedom of opinion and expression in Egypt during 2007 has been released. The report says spread an atmosphere of fanaticism is to blame for the launching of hundreds of harrassing defamation cases against Egyptian writers and journalists through launching hundreds of these cases. Click here to read the report.

February 11, 2008: (Compass Direct News) – Egypt’s top administrative court has ruled in favor of 12 converts to Islam seeking to return to Christianity but has left the group vulnerable to discrimination by mandating their former religion be noted on official documents. In his ruling Saturday (February 9), Judge El-Sayeed Noufal ordered Egypt’s Interior Ministry to issue the converts “Christian documents” noting their “ex-Muslim” status. Human rights activists heralded the decision as a breakthrough for religious freedom in Egypt, where conversion away from Islam, though not illegal, has been forbidden in practice. But human rights advocates remained wary, saying that listing the converts’ former religion on their documents would make them vulnerable to discrimination. “It’s obviously a stigmatization to have [“ex-Muslim”] on your ID card,” a representative for the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights told Compass. Click here to read more.

January 31, 2008: (Advocates For The Persecuted) Egypt’s administrative court issued two historical verdicts on Tuesday: one restricting religious freedom for citizens wishing to change from Islam to another faith, and another opening a possible window of freedom for the nation’s small number of adherents to the Baha’i religion. Click here to read more

January 31, 2008: (Compass Direct News) – In a blow to religious freedom in Egypt, a Cairo court has ruled against a Muslim convert to Christianity who requested that his religious affiliation be changed. Click here to read more.

January 29, 2008: (IFEX) – A staggering 500 trials were launched against journalists, writers and bloggers in Egypt in 2007. Click here to read more.

January 29, 2008: (AFP) - A Cairo court on Tuesday ruled to allow Egyptian Bahais to leave their religion blank on official documents, in effect restoring their access to jobs, schools and medical and financial services. The Court of Administrative Justice ruled in favour of two cases seeking to leave the religious affiliation field blank on official documents. The first case involved a lawsuit by Rauf Hindi, who was seeking legal birth certificates for his 14-year-old twins, Imad and Nancy. Click here to read more.

January 26, 2008: (Advocates For The Persecuted) – An Egyptian Administrative Court hearing on a controversial petition by a Muslim convert to allow him to change his religion to Christianity raised the stakes for the nation’s converts, when Islamists gave the court a list naming those who help converts, and accusing a human rights worker of being a convert. Click here to read more.

January 25, 2008: (Compass Direct News) – An Egyptian judge is scheduled to rule next week on the case of a Muslim-born convert to Christianity whose court hearing threatened to turn into a brawl earlier this month. In hiding since his case began in August, Mohammed Hegazy and his wife Zeinab gave birth to a baby girl on January 10. The convert’s main motivation for changing his religious affiliation was the upcoming birth of his daughter. Under current Egyptian law, unless Hegazy can change his religious affiliation, his daughter would be forced to attend Islamic religion classes and marry a Muslim man. Click here to read more.

January 17, 2008: An Egyptian Christian, Onsy Zakhary, is in danger of imminent deportation from the U.S. to Egypt and faces probable torture if returned, say advocates. Click here to read more.

January 17, 2008: An Egyptian Christian pressured to convert to Islam, who fled to the United States in 1998, has gained a ruling from U.S. District Judge Thomas I. Vanaskie detailed in a 53-page ruling that said Sameh Khouzam made a "credible showing" that he had been tortured by Egyptian law enforcement officials before. Vanaskie ruled the government could not deport Khouzam on the basis of diplomatic assurances that Khouzam would not be tortured without court review. Sources said Khouzam was finally released from a U.S. prison yesterday. "The State Department said it has received reliable assurances that Khouzam will not be tortured if he is deported back to Egypt. Government attorneys said the court must defer to the executive branch's determination that Egypt's assurances are sufficient... 'In light of the government's refusal to expose the Egyptian diplomatic assurance to any sort of impartial review, the government may not proceed with the removal of Khouzam,' wrote Vanaskie, a judge with the court's Middle District of Pennsylvania in Scranton."This case is considered a victory for those who face deportation and torture despite U.S. State Department claims that Egypt will not torture those deported who have been outspoken about persecution of Christians.

Our sources report Sameh was released from prison on January 15, 2008 and reunited with his mother, Georgette. Sameh is still not completely out of danger however, and even though the judge did not order this, he is forced to wear an ankle bracelet and restricted not to leave the State of Pennsylvania.

January 14, 2008: Egypt (Egypt News) -- Egyptian attorney general yesterday ordered the release of a Coptic Christian woman jailed due to a mix-up over her religion after her father briefly converted to Islam more than 45 years ago. Click here to read more.