A letter smuggled out of Cairo’s Mazraa Tora prison in September confirmed that an Egyptian convert to Christianity, who disappeared in May, has been imprisoned on criminal charges.
in a handwritten letter, Hisham Samir Abdel Latif Ibrahim, 26, of Alexandria, confirmed that he had been arrested in early May by Egyptian security police. According to the letter, which was written to a Coptic Christian cleric, Ibrahim has been accused of falsifying his identity papers and reviling Islam. Ibrahim alleges that after the arrest he was questioned for 52 days in the State Security Investigation (SSI) in Cairo.
“I was told that a man called Adel had informed them about me,” Ibrahim wrote. He stated that SSI officers had interrogated him daily and claimed that they knew who had issued new Christian identity papers for Ibrahim. Born in Alexandria into a Muslim family, Ibrahim is believed to have obtained Christian identity papers on the basis of a newly issued birth certificate identifying him as Milad Mahrous Habib Agayby.
Egyptian Muslims are forbidden by law to change their religious identity, although open incentives are offered to Christian citizens to convert to Islam. Ibrahim writes that he had appeared three times before a state prosecutor while under arrest. The legal charges against him were filed in 2001. Ibrahim also reported that two other former Muslims were under arrest for converting to Christianity. Mohammed Hegazy, a Christian convert from Port Said, was being detained in the Mazraa Tora prison, accused of insulting an officer of Egypt’s security police.
Ibrahim also said he had been told by the prosecutor before whom he appeared that a woman convert from Port Said, identified only by the name of Sara, had been arrested as well. Before his disappearance May 7, Ibrahim had been living with Shafik Labeb Ishaq and his wife Violet, a Christian couple active in an evangelical Coptic church in Cairo.
Since March the couple and their three daughters have been repeatedly harassed by both security police and local Muslim extremists. The Ishaq family family’s pastor confirmed this in a written statement from Cairo. An accountant for an Egyptian communications company, Ishaq confirmed that several times during March security police officers summoned him and his wife for interrogation, sometimes late at night or even at dawn. At the same time, the family received warning notes and dozens of obscene telephone calls, threatening to kidnap and rape their youngest daughter Sarah, 14. Repeated attempts have been made by young Muslim men to convince Sarah to run away, leaver her faith and become a Muslim.
On April 8 fanatic Muslims in the neighborhood managed to kidnap Sarah for four days. (CD)
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