III. Security Interventions and Harassment

20. On 28 June 2009, A.A. (21), his mother and two employees with the Beni Soueif civil registry office were arrested on charges of falsifying official documents showing that A.A. had converted to Christianity. The security apparatus alleged that the suspects had falsified A.A.’s birth certificate by changing his name and his religion from Muslim to Christian; they then obtained a national identity card based on the false information contained in the forged birth certificate. The incident was registered as no. 18/295/2009.

According to information obtained by EIPR researchers from Peter al-Naggar, the attorney for A.A. and his mother, A.A.’s mother was a Christian before she converted to Islam and married a Muslim man. She had four children before she returned to Christianity, and A.A. wanted to be a Christian like his mother. The attorney added that A.A. and his three brothers decided to try to obtain falsified identity documents since the Ministry of Interior does not recognize conversions from Islam to Christianity on official documents. The case was referred to the prosecutor the same day as the arrest, and the prosecutor took statements from the suspects before releasing them and closing the case, according to the attorney.

21. On 14 July 2009, the Supreme State Security Prosecutor began questioning 13 citizens about their belief in and promotion of Shi’ism. State Security police arrested Hassan Shehata Youssef and 12 others in April 2009 and detained them in an undisclosed location for four months before finally announcing the beginning of the investigation before the State Security Prosecutor. According to media reports, the prosecutor charged the defendants in case no. 624/2009 with forming an organization to propagate Shi’ite beliefs that offend Islam and Sunni confessions and receiving funds from abroad for this purpose. The defendants were still detained pending investigations into the case as of the writing of this report.

According to information obtained by EIPR researchers, Hassan Shehata’s health has deteriorated; he suffers from diabetes, an inflamed facial nerve, and is general physically weak. Hassan Shehata used to be a preacher at a Cairo mosque and also hosted a religious program on Egyptian television; he was arrested in 1995, also for his Shi’ite beliefs.

22. The weekly al-Karama reported on 27 July 2009 that State Security police sent out warnings to board members of some private religious television stations and their directors in Cairo on 21 July stressing the need to exercise caution when inviting guests on religious programs and warning programmers to avoid hosting dubious elements, including proponents of Salafi thought, extremist Shi’ism and other proponents of militant views, in order to avoid inflaming civil strife and disseminating views that could destroy society. EIPR researchers were not able to obtain a copy of these warnings or independently confirm the accuracy of the report.


23. On 28 July 2009, the security apparatus ordered a wood seller, Mamdouh Yassi, to stop working on a wood warehouse he was building in the village of Reida, located in the Minya district of Minya, because State Security police officers believed he intended to turn the building into an evangelical church. The security directives came four days after the sectarian attacks on Christians in the village of al-Hawasiliya, located two kilometers from Reida; the attacks were occasioned by the opposition of some village Muslims to the establishment of an evangelical church in the village (see paragraph 12 of this report). Security also demolished the sections of the warehouse that had been built. Mamdouh Yassi told EIPR researchers that he was summoned by State Security police in Minya in late July 2009 and questioned about whether he was building a church. Although he told the officers that he was a wood seller who was building a warehouse, one of the officers told him to discontinue working on it until the situation in Reida and nearby al-Hawasiliya calmed down. Construction on the warehouse had not resumed as of the writing of this report.

24. On 30 July 2009, the Civil Status police in Mansoura, in the province of Dakahliya, arrested G.S., a Christian woman, while she was applying for birth certificates for her two children, on charges of using falsified official documents that showed her as a Christian married to a Christian man. The police charged her with forging a marriage certificate showing her marriage to a Christian and obtaining a marriage certificate showing a Christian name and religious affiliation, even though her father had converted to Islam when she was 12 years old and changed her name and religion to Islam.

G.S. and her husband were brought before the prosecutor the same day, and the prosecutor questioned them about forging the marriage certificate (incident no. 8270/2009). The prosecutor released them pending investigations into the case; the priest who married them and the witnesses to the marriage were also summoned for questioning, but had not appeared before the prosecutor as of the writing of this report.

According to information obtained by the EIPR, G.S. was born in 1980 to Christian parents; her father converted to Islam in 1992. Although that same year he changed her religious affiliation on official documents, G.S. decided to remain a Christian. In 1998, she married a Christian using her Christian name and religious affiliation, and the couple had two children.

On 19 January 2006, G.S. filed lawsuit no. 11097/60 with the Court of Administrative Justice in Cairo, asking the court to compel the Civil Status Authority to issue her a national identity card containing her true religious affiliation and the name she was born with. The court suspended the case on 4 March 2009 pending a decision from the Supreme Constitutional Court on the constitutionality of an article in the Civil Status Law that allows a person to change his religion on official documents without condition or restriction, and inconsistencies between this article and the provisions of Islamic law.


25. On 15 August 2009, Father Stefanos Shehata, the priest of Izbat Dawoud Youssef, located in the Samalut district of Minya, sent a number of complaints to the President and human rights organizations, including the EIPR, asking that village Christians be allowed to use 100-meter square hall built on his private property as a reception hall for local Copts during weddings and funerals; he pledged that no prayer services would be held in the hall.

Father Stefanos told EIPR researchers that some 800 Orthodox Copts live in Dawoud Youssef and have no church and therefore must worship at the church in al-Tiba, about five kilometers from the village. The priest added that village Christians must also hold marriage services, weddings and funeral prayer services in the street, which offends their sensibilities and undermines their dignity and the dignity of the deceased. Father Stefanos said that he had submitted an application in May to the governor of Minya and State Security police asking for permission to use the hall for these Christian occasions, but the governor had not responded to the request, while State Security rejected it on the grounds that village Muslims do not want a Christian reception hall in their Muslim-majority village.

Father Stefanos added that a few days before he sent his complaint to the President, he received threats from some local Muslims warning that if he continued to demand a reception hall, he would be killed. This prompted him to leave the village, where his mother and siblings live, and he had not returned as of the writing of this report.

26. On 31 August 2009, the Qusiya city council, located in the governorate of Assyout, prohibited Unsi Sami from completing construction of a wall around a plot of land he owns in the village of Beni Hilal, administratively subordinate to Qusiya. The council ordered the sections of the wall already built to be demolished pursuant to security directives, as State Security police suspected he intended to build a church on the plot of fenced-in land.

According to information obtained by EIPR researchers, Unsi Sami obtained a permit from the city council to build the wall, but when he began construction in early June 2009, men from the police station and city council came to the building site and asked him to halt construction, on the grounds that some Muslim citizens had complained that Sami intended to build a church on his land, which is directly adjacent to the shrine of a revered Muslim figure. Sami said he was summoned to the Qusiya police station, where State Security officers questioned him about his intentions to build a church. When Sami denied such an intention, an officer asked him to sign an affidavit swearing that he did not intend to build a church, that he would only build a wall around his land and that if he engaged in any construction on his land he would inform the competent authorities.




When he resumed construction on the wall in mid-June, the city council asked him to halt it again, and the council filed a police report (no. 2787/2009) charging him with building violations. The prosecutor dismissed the complaint after taking Sami’s statement on 26 June 2009.

Despite the prosecutor’s decision, the city council issued a new decree on 31 August 2009, no. 443/2009, forcing Sami to halt construction, removing construction materials from the site, and demolishing the already constructed sections of the wall.

27. Several newspapers reported in late August and early September 2009 that police officers in the governorate of Aswan had launched street campaigns arresting people who ate publicly before sunset during Ramadan. Although the campaigns were not confirmed, on 12 September 2009, the daily al-Shorouk quoted General Hamdi Abd al-Karim, the deputy interior ministry for media, who said, “The campaign launched by police officers in several districts against those eating in public is grounded in the law.” He asked human rights organizations that had criticized the arrests to “read the law well before attacking the Ministry of Interior.”

On 14 September 2009, ten human rights organizations, among them the EIPR, issued a joint statement expressing their “unequivocal rejection” of the deputy minister’s statements and asked the office of the Public Prosecutor to issue an immediate statement confirming the lack of legitimacy of such police campaigns, which the organizations described as illegal. The organizations also asked the Interior Ministry to make public the facts of these campaigns, their geographic extent, the number of people arrested and the charges brought against them. The 10 groups demanded the immediate release of any person being detained in the context of this campaign and full accountability for those managing the campaign. Neither the Ministry of Interior nor the Public Prosecutor’s office had released any additional information as of the writing of this report.

28. On 16 September 2009, officials with the al-Adwa city council in the governorate of Minya demolished a house under construction owned by a Christian in the al-Qiyat village, administratively subordinate to the city, on the grounds that police officers suspected that the homeowner intended to turn the building into a church. According to information obtained by the EIPR, Khamis Fayez Nashed began building a house on a plot of land he owns on 1 August 2009; construction proceeded apace without harassment until 16 August 2009, when he was summoned to the Sheikh Masoud police station with his cousin, Atallah Rashid Nashid. There police officers asked them to sign an affidavit stating that they were building a house, not a church and that they would not sell the house to the Orthodox Coptic Bishopric. The owner of the house was summoned the same day to the Adwa police station, where he was asked to write and sign a similar oath.

Nashed resumed construction until 16 September, when he and his cousin were again summoned to the police station, where they were detained upon arrival, while city council bulldozers, supported by a large security force, demolished the house. Nashed told EIPR researchers that while he was being detained, the sheriff told him, “Relax—we’ve leveled your church because you know how to lie to us, saying you’re building a house when you’re really building a church.”

29. On 17 September 2009, Sate Security police officers at the Cairo airport prevented Maher al-Gohari, a Muslim who converted to Christianity, from traveling to China, after his passport was stamped with an exit visa and shortly before he boarded the plane. Nabil Ghobriel, al-Gohari’s attorney, told EIPR researchers that his client was prohibited from boarding the plane and led to a security waiting room, where he was informed that a travel ban had been issued for him by an “executive” agency that was not identified; he was detained there for three hours. His lawyer told EIPR researchers that al-Gohari filed a police report on 18 September 2009 against the Prime Minister, the Interior Minister and the director of airport security. He asked for an investigation of the incident and compensation. Al-Gohari tried to travel again on 22 September 2009; airport authorities again banned him from travel and this time confiscated his passport.

Maher al-Gohhari had filed a lawsuit before the Court of Administrative Justice asking that the Ministry of Interior’s Civil Status Authority be required to issue him an identity card documenting his conversion to Christianity, but the court rejected his request in a ruling issued on 13 June 2009 (see paragraph 8 of the Second Quarterly Report, 2009).

30. On 23 September 2009, police officers from the Qasr al-Nil station arrested Abd al-Masih Kamel Barsoum, 61, who works with an evangelical church in Minya, while he was distributing Christian religious material on the Corniche in the Tahrir area in downtown Cairo. Barsoum was taken to the Qasr al-Nil police station and reported for not carrying an identity card; he was referred to the prosecutor’s office, which ordered his release. Despite the order, Barsoum was transferred to the Khalifa police station and at dawn on 24 September, was sent back to the governorate of Minya, and from there to the State Security office in the governorate, where he was questioned about distributing the material. Miryam Abd al-Masih, Barsoum’s daughter, filed a complaint with the Public Prosecutor’s office (no. 17069/2009) on 26 September 2009, saying that her father was being unlawfully detained; he was released the afternoon of the same day.