I. Court Rulings and Trials

1. On 14 October 2009, in case no. 444/2009/criminal/al-Wayli, a Cairo criminal court headed by Judge Adli Mahmoud Hassan sentenced citizen A.R.S. to one year in prison after she was convicted of placing false information on her application for a national identity card. A.R.S. was accused of using the name and identifying information of a deceased Christian women and subsequently using this application with the falsified information to obtain a national identity card. The court also sentenced B.S.R., the sister of the deceased, to five years in prison in absentia for signing the application form and attesting to the veracity of the information contained therein.

The ruling, a copy of which was obtained by the EIPR, stated, “The court was unequivocally convinced that the two defendants, who are not civil servants, falsified an official document, the application for a national identity card issued by the Civil Status Authority. This was done with the participation of two well-intentioned civil servants with the Authority. [The defendants] knowingly falsified information, with the first defendant assuming the name of [the deceased], using her personal information and falsely attesting that it was true on the aforementioned application. The second defendant falsely attested that it was true, after which the employee at the Authority approved it, and thus the crime was committed pursuant to this help.”

In a story about the ruling published in the daily al-Shorouk on 18 October 2009, the paper stated, “The defendant converted to Christianity ten years ago and disappeared from her family’s home in Mansoura. Her mother filed a missing persons report, but the police were unable to discover the cause of her disappearance all these years until the Civil Status Authority exposed the falsification of her identity card. The police attempted to arrest her, but could not find her. When the defendant went to the Cairo airport in an attempt to flee to South Africa, security arrested her and informed her that she was charged in a forgery case and wanted for prosecution.”

2. On 21 October 2009, a Cairo criminal court headed by Judge Intisar Nasim sentenced citizen A.S.M., a convert from Islam to Christianity, to one year in prison with labor after she was convicted of abetting the falsification of her marriage contract with a Christian by taking a false Christian name on the contract. The court also convicted her of complicity in the falsification of her son’s birth certificate and family identity card through the use of the falsified marriage contract. After the verdict was issued, the defendant told the daily al-Shorouk in its 22 October issue that “she had converted to Christianity and was filing a lawsuit with the Court of Administrative Justice to compel the Minister of Interior to change her name to Marola to establish the legitimacy of her marriage and her child’s identity.”

3. On 13 December 2009 the sixth circuit of the Court of Administrative Justice, headed by Judge Anwar Ibrahim Khalil, voided a decree issued by the president of Ain Shams University prohibiting female students who wear a full face veil (niqab) from living in student dormitories. The decision came in response to two cases (2008/64 and 2009/64) filed by two students who wear the niqab against the rules issued by the university president. The court ordered the university to give the two plaintiffs housing in the Ain Shams University dorms for the 2009-10 academic year.

In its ruling, a copy of which was obtained by the EIPR, the court stated, “It is well-established in the proceedings of courts under the State Council that the legislator has set up a bulwark around personal freedom and public rights and liberties. Since donning the niqab is, for a Muslim woman, a manifestation of this freedom, no administrative or other body can place an absolute ban on it. When necessary for the public interest, the woman’s identity can be verified based on the exigencies of public security, to receive knowledge or various services, to carry out certain services or based on other considerations of contemporary daily life that require the woman’s identity to be confirmed when asked by the competent authorities.” The ruling referred to a previous ruling handed down by the Supreme Administrative Court’s Circuit for the Unification of Principles in appeal no. 3219/48, issued on 9 June 2007, which allowed students wearing the niqab to enter university grounds.

The court stated, “The protection guaranteed by the Constitution for the right to education extends to all its constituent elements. It is impermissible to discriminate between students in treatment, and the right to education includes the rights to benefit from [educational] facilities and services.”

Last year, the Supreme Council of Universities, chaired by Dr. Hani Helal, the Minister of Higher Education and the Minister of State for Scientific Research, prohibited the wearing of the niqab in university dormitories, according to press statements made by Helal. The decree went into effect with the beginning of the current school year. Helal justified the decision in statements made to al-Ahram on 12 October 2009 saying, “Individual freedom is not absolute; it should not encroach on others. Universities believe that it is their duty to protect the security of all female students in the dormitories…Students must comply with rules in the dorms as established by the university for their benefit.” Hilal said the decree “is irreversible, out of protection for female students in the dormitories in particular. It’s only girls there, so what need is there to wear a niqab in the dorms? Supervisors must be able to recognize the students before they enter the female dorms—15 men have been caught trying to enter the dormitories under cover of the niqab.”

When the decree went into effect this year, students who wear the niqab organized demonstrations at several Egyptian universities demanding that it be rescinded.

4. The Supreme State Security Court on 16 December 2009 overturned a detention order issued by the Minister of Interior for blogger Hani Nazir, who writes the Karez al-Hubb blog. The Interior Ministry arrested Nazir on 3 October 2008 following rumors in the village of al-Ila, located in the Abu Tisht district of Qena, that he had published materials defaming Islam on his blog (see paragraph 20 of the Fourth Quarterly Report, 2008). Although the Ministry of Interior appealed the ruling, the court rejected the appeal on 10 January 2010, upholding the lower court ruling and overturning the order for administrative detention.

5. On 19 December 2009, a Cairo criminal court headed by Judge Saad Badawi Hammad sentenced Rami Khilla and his uncle Atef Khilla, both Christians, to death by hanging. Rami Khilla was convicted of the murder of his brother-in-law after his sister converted to Islam and married a Muslim, as well as the attempted murder of his sister and niece, with the help of his uncle.

On 6 October 2008, Rami Khilla used an automatic weapon to shoot his sister and her family; his sister had converted to Islam two years earlier, married a Muslim and had a 10-month-old daughter. Her Muslim husband died, while the child was injured; the woman was injured in her left arm, which was amputated as a result. The defendant fled the scene with his uncle, the second defendant in the case, who was waiting in a car nearby (see paragraph 9 of the Fourth Quarterly Report, 2008). The written ruling had not yet been issued at the time of writing.

6. On 22 December 2009, the Cairo Criminal Court for Misdemeanor Appeals, headed by Judge Amin Safwat, rejected an appeal (no. 321/2007) filed by lawyers with the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information on behalf of blogger Abd al-Karim Nabil Suleiman, known as Karim Amer, contesting the four-year prison sentence handed down to Amer by the Muharram Bek Misdemeanor Appeals Court in Alexandria after he was convicted of denigrating and mocking Islam and insulting the President. Amer’s ruling is thus final.

The security apparatus arrested the blogger in late October 2006 because of opinions he published on his blog. After he was released by security, al-Azhar University, where he was enrolled as a student, expelled him and filed a complaint against him with the Public Prosecutor. Amer was questioned by the Supreme State Security Prosecutor and referred to the Muharram Bek Misdemeanor Court in Alexandria, which sentenced him to four years in prison. The sentence was previously upheld by the Appeals Court (see paragraph 6 of the Third Quarterly Report, 2009).

7. On 26 December 2009, the seventh circuit of the Court of Administrative Justice headed by Judge Hamdi Yassin Okasha rejected a lawsuit (no. 13033/54) filed by a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a Christian denomination that is not recognized by the Egyptian state. The lawsuit asked for the abolition of a decree issued by the Notary Bureau that prohibits any notary office or branch office from taking any measures to notarize, sign or validate documents issued by the Jehovah’s Witnesses Association.

Seeking to establish an association, the Christian Jehovah’s Witnesses Cultural Association for Social Development, the plaintiff and others went to a notary office to have a rental contract notarized for an apartment to be used by the association (still under establishment), but the office refused, based on Notice no. 9/1985, issued on 21 August 1985. That notice bans notaries from “taking any measure to notarize a marriage contract in which one or both spouses declare their Christian religion to be Jehovah’s Witnesses. No measure may be taken to notarize signatures or dates on any documents issued by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Association, which is the Jehovah’s Witnesses Association,” according to the court ruling, a copy of which was obtained by the EIPR.

In its ruling, the court addressed the legitimacy of the Jehovah’s Witnesses Association within the Egyptian legal system: “The Jehovah’s Witnesses Association — though its members may consider themselves to be Christian — does not represent a Christian confession denomination that has acquired legal personhood in the Egyptian legal system as an Orthodox, Catholic or Protestant sect…Insofar as freedom of belief and the practice of religious rites are concerned, it is free to believe what it likes about its relationship to its lord, but as a group it does not belong to the Egyptian legal system. As such, individuals seeking to establish the association and notarize documents of their affairs have that right as individuals, exclusive of the right to form religious associations that do not belong to the Egyptian legal system.”

The court added, “Although the right to form associations is a constitutional right that must be protected, it is conditional: the goal of establishing an association cannot violate the rules of the public order that achieve the country’s public interest, for these are connected to the natural moral or material condition of an organized society and supersede individual interests. They are founded on the idea of protecting society from sectarian strife and maintaining the elements of national unity, particularly when both freedom of belief and the right to form associations are so closely connected to the established collective legal and social order, such that public sentiment is harmed when any belief or association threatens the public order.”

The court discussed the beliefs of the Jehovah’s Witnesses through others’ perceptions of those beliefs. Thus, the court based its judgment on the view of “Pope Shenouda, the patriarch of the Holy See of St. Mark of Orthodox Copts,” saying that Shenouda described the group as “not one heresy established a quarter century ago, but rather a set of heresies and perversions of the Book. They are generally against religion and they are not Christians despite their belief in the four Gospels…They are not affiliated with Christ but with Jehovah, one of the names of God in the Old Testament.” The court reasoned that the beliefs of the Jehovah’s Witnesses were incompatible with public order, saying, “Many of the beliefs of the Jehovah’s Witnesses clash with the public order, including their denial of all religions and their belief that these are all the work of Satan and were established by Nimrod…” Digressing into a critique of the group’s beliefs, the court said that they hold “a threat of religious and sectarian strife and the destruction of the foundation of national unity on which the fabric of Egyptian society is based.”

The court concluded that “while the Jehovah’s Witnesses and others have the freedom of belief and religious practice in the relationship between its adherents and God in accordance with the Constitution, its legal presence and its right as a group to enjoy rights and liberties is conditional on it being an inseparable part of the Egyptian legal system as noted. It is not so, which means its lawsuit has no legal basis and must be rejected.”

8. The Court of Administrative Justice on 29 December 2009 rejected two lawsuits filed by Christian citizens requesting that the Prime Minister declare Easter as a national holiday and an official day off for all state and public sector agencies.

In its ruling, a copy of which was obtained by the EIPR, the court stated that there is no “legal obligation on the government to consider Easter an official holiday for state ministries and departments.”

The plaintiffs argued that not making Easter an official state holiday constitutes religious discrimination, since the state observes many Islamic holidays, to which the court responded, “The government does not glorify the religious holidays of Muslims to the exclusion of other confessions, and it does not discriminate between religious holidays in regard to their holiness and the respect accorded them. It does not object to the right of citizens of different religions to observe the rites of their religious holidays, releasing them from the restrictions of work.”

Explaining the fact that some Islamic holidays are state holidays while Easter is not, the court stated, “The crux of the matter is that [the government], when deciding on the appropriateness of suspending work in ministries and state agencies on Muslim religious holidays, comes down on the side of reality since the majority of employees, as well as the majority of the population, are Muslims. In practice it would be difficult to require employees to work in their departments and offices. Thus, there is no government bias in favor of Muslims at the expense of other religious confessions…At the same time, there are facilities and departments that do not halt their work due to people’s urgent need for them, such as transportation facilities, prosecutors’ offices, and electricity and water facilities. It need not be said that most of the staff and workers at these facilities are Muslims, and mandating that they work on their religious holidays is not incompatible with the sanctity of the holidays.”

Addressing the status of non-Muslims, the court stated, “As for non-Muslims, they are a minority of civil servants and their absence on their holidays does not affect the organized flow of work; similarly, their leaving government offices to celebrate their holidays does not paralyze work. Thus, saying that the contested decree was issued due to some religious bias or intent to maintain discrimination and inequality is far from the truth. There can be no argument that many Muslim religious holidays and occasions are not holidays in ministries and state agencies. As for the official celebration of some of these holidays, this is attributable to historical, social and pragmatic considerations.”

The court cited other nations as examples, saying that they follow the same method and describing them as “the highest constitutional nations.” The court added, “Western countries officially celebrate Christian religious holidays and do not celebrate non-Christian holidays, although some of their citizens belong to non-Christian confessions. No one has said that this is religious bigotry that undermines equality and freedom of belief or impinges on the civilizational status of these countries. Moreover, non-Muslims celebrate their religious holidays just as Muslims celebrate theirs. They have the freedom to practice their rites in houses of worship, churches and temples on these holidays, and civil servants are released of their duties in government ministries and agencies. There is no coercion prohibiting them from practicing their rites. In this, they are exactly like Muslims. As such, equality and freedom of belief are guaranteed for them and are not encroached upon.”