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Egypt: After years of torture and harassment, Christian convert returns to Islam

Aug 6, 2016 1:01 pm By Robert Spencer

Hegazy has been harassed, tortured, and unjustly imprisoned. No one can say he would not break under such circumstances. And since Islam mandates that those who leave Islam be executed, his years of harsh treatment are, paradoxically, mild compared to what he would have gotten had Egyptian authorities decided to follow Islamic law scrupulously. But his treatment also shows that the Egyptian guarantees of religious freedom are worthless: even if Islamic law is not fully implemented in Egypt, it still wields an enormously strong influence in Egyptian society, and its courtrooms.

Hegazy_with_Ghobrial

“Egypt convert’s legal limbo finally brings him ‘back to Islam,’” World Watch Monitor, August 2, 2016:

Egyptian lawyer Karam Ghobrial was clearly distraught as he talked about the saga both he and his client, once Muslim-turned-Christian Mohamed Hegazy, have endured over the past month. That was before Hegazy – the first Egyptian to openly seek, in 2007, a change from Muslim to Christian on his ID card – finally declared on Friday, 29 July his return to Islam, the departure from which has caused him endless woes.

In late June, a court had ordered Hegazy – then still a Christian – be released on bail for charges that should not have been brought in the first place: charges, the lawyer insists, which had either passed their statute of limitations, or from which he was already cleared.

Yet the man who dared to ‘officially’ leave Islam could not walk free for weeks – until now. And he has publicly blessed Muhammad as “the Chief-most among Allah’s creation” on a YouTube video, in which he also spells out the Shahada, the Islamic proclamation of allegiance.

Hegazy broke new ground in 2007 as the first Egyptian to openly seek a change from Muslim to Christian on his ID card. He took a new ‘Christian’ name, Bishoy Armeya, but his government ID card from 2010 still showed his original ‘birth’ name.

It was a step he judged necessary to save his son the suffering he has borne under a system mandating religious identification on every Egyptian’s ID card, the path to one’s own civil existence in the country. He had become a Christian, of his own choice, at the age of 16, in 1998. In 2002, he was briefly jailed and tortured, then – later with his family – went into hiding. In December 2013, Hegazy was re-arrested, and charged with two counts relating to 2009 and 2013 – one for “protesting without permission” and the other for “defamation of religion”. The first, says the lawyer, he had been cleared of, while the statute of limitations expired on the second while he was still in jail. Still, Hegazy had been kept in prison anyway.

‘Go to the court and check’

The latest episode of the convert’s ordeal started on 29 June 2016, when the New Cairo Fifth Settlement Court ordered Hegazy be released on a bail of EGP 5,000 ($US 560). When lawyer Ghobrial tried to carry the order through, he found himself and his client in a procedural maze that, over the past month, took them to nearly half a dozen jurisdictions around the country:

“It is most unfortunate that, just as I feared, my client has not been allowed to walk free,” said Ghobrial to World Watch Monitor, in the middle of trying to effect a release order that should have normally taken a day, but was still dragging on for much longer – with no hope in sight.

In an atmosphere of misinformation, orchestrated by the police, the prosecution and the prison authorities, the only source of reliable information about his client came from messages by fellow detainees leaked to their visiting families, and in turn to the lawyer.

With nothing having happened for three days, the lawyer decided to meet the chief warden of Tora Prison, where Hegazy had been held intermittently since 2013. “I went early in the morning of 29 June to know why my client was not released, despite the judicial order. The warden told me he received no court order. ‘Go to the court and check,’ he said.”

For a client to be detained – with no legal reasons left for their detention – contravenes Egypt’s laws and Constitution.

At the court, the lawyer was told the order had indeed been dispatched. “Back at the prison, I was told the least they would accept – in absence of a court order – was an order by the prosecution office, thus sending me back to the court a second time [a distance of about 30 kilometres each way].”

Eventually, Ghobrial managed to get the prosecution order. “It was then that the warden refused to let Hegazy go. He said he could not release him in the absence of an ID or a birth certificate to identify the inmate scheduled for release.”

The lawyer protested that it was on the grounds of Hegazy’s established identity that he was kept in prison for so long. But Ghobrial was given no satisfactory answer.

Now Ghobrial had to produce a copy of Hegazy’s birth certificate. To do that, the lawyer had to obtain a new Power of Attorney, including a specific phrase to allow him to have a birth certificate issued on behalf of his client.

“The registry clerk resisted giving me the document with the specific wording,” Ghobrial said, believing the “collective intransigence had to do with my client’s disavowal of Islam” at the time.

‘Well below human’

After haggling, Ghobrial managed to get the paper and thereafter the birth certificate. The warden released Hegazy, but only to the custody of a downtown Cairo police station.

While his client was in the holding cell of al-Khalifa Police Station, Ghobrial was going through the motions to carry out the bail order.

Now the al-Khalifa police officers insisted Hegazy must first be dispatched to Port Said, a city 200km east. They said it was the “natural” next step, since the birth certificate indicated the city as the client’s birthplace.

Aware of the toll the journey could take on his already exhausted client, with conditions in the transfer van “arguably well below human”, Ghobrial tried instead to have Hegazy moved to Ain Shams Police Station, in an area well within the boundaries of Cairo, “as his passport was issued from Ain Shams”.

“Upon this, the officers at al-Khalifa police station said he would be moved to Ain Shams Police Station instead.”

Everything is possible.

Yet a word from the inside to the lawyer revealed that the police, contrary to their assurances, were about to move Hegazy south to Minya (260km away), while keeping Ghobrial in the dark.

“When confronted, the police said they were acting upon an urgent notice from the State Security, who wanted Hegazy in Minya”. The State Security is the body of agents renamed “National Security”, empowered to halt release of individuals considered of “particular concern”.

Further paperwork had to be done in Minya to confirm the original release order. Hegazy was then brought back to Cairo’s al-Khalifa station before he could be moved to the police custody in Ain Shams upon his lawyer’s request.

‘Nowhere to be found’

“By this time, we’re already into the small hours of Monday 4 July, and I’ve lost touch of my client’s whereabouts,” Ghobrial told World Watch Monitor a month ago.

Fearing his client could already be in Ain Shams but “hidden” from him by the police there, Ghobrial tried the help of a parliament member.

But is it at all imaginable that the police could hide someone in their custody from his lawyer? “Everything is possible,” replied Ghobrial.

After a search, Ghobrial learnt his client was remanded in al-Salam police station, an hour’s drive away from Cairo’s Ain Shams police station.

We cannot be in his shoes and know what kind of pressure he endured.

“When I went [to al-Salam], they told me the person I was looking for was not in their custody.”

Back at al-Khalifa, the police told him his client was now in Ain Shams. At Ain Shams, the man who had defied Islam’s apostasy law was again nowhere to be found.

“Over the course of two trials, my client was acquitted in one and the other expired two years ago by its statute of limitations, yet Hegazy has been through scores of hearings and orders of protective custody.

“For a client to be detained somewhere unknown to their lawyer, with no legal reasons left for their detention, this contravenes the country’s laws and its Constitution. Yet, in Hegazy’s case, it’s precisely what’s happened,” said Ghobrial.

‘Released’

Informed sources later told World Watch Monitor Hegazy was eventually transferred to Port Said, his last police station, before he was “finally released”.

Despite Hegazy being of age (34), “his release was conditioned by the acceptance of his parents to keep him under their control,” said a source, on condition of anonymity.

Now a video posted on YouTube on 30 July suddenly shows a “repentant” Hegazy declaring he has returned to Islam.

In it, Hegazy apologises to his family and says he will never talk again to the media.

I am under no pressures from anyone. I am not being held by any agency.

“I want nothing from this video. I have no desires. I will not appear again in the media. I will not appear again publicly. […] I say this out of my complete free will. I am under no pressures from anyone. I am not being held by any agency, nor am I under any pressure of any kind. And that’s it,” said Hegazy, in an apparently well-rehearsed statement.

“None of us was there during his three years in jail,” said a source close to the proceedings. “We cannot be in his shoes and know what kind of pressure he endured – either during his prison time, or from his family, who wanted him to be released.”…

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Filed Under: Apostasy, converts to Islam, Egypt, Muslim persecution of Christians Tagged With: Bishoy Armeya, Mohamed Hegazy


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Comments

  1. Angemon says

    Aug 6, 2016 at 2:20 pm

    Yet the man who dared to ‘officially’ leave Islam could not walk free for weeks – until now.

    No compulsion in religion my ass…

    • gravenimage says

      Aug 6, 2016 at 3:11 pm

      Exactly. This is what Islam is set up to do–humiliate, abuse, and torture any who will not submit to it–those who try to escape it, most of all. What has been done to poor Mohamed Hegazy has been done to millions before him.

      And yes–this is “moderate” Egypt–he likely would have been beheaded long since in a more Islamic state.

      • EYESOPEN says

        Aug 6, 2016 at 8:59 pm

        “And yes–this is “moderate” Egypt–he likely would have been beheaded long since in a more Islamic state.”

        You are absolutely right Graven. And if I were either Hegazy OR his lawyer, I would grow eyes in the back of my head. Devout muzscum do not like the lawyers who try to defend people from sharia.

        • gravenimage says

          Aug 7, 2016 at 8:08 pm

          I agree, EYESOPEN. Despite his returning to Islam, neither Hegazy–nor his lawyer–may be safe. We have seen lawyers for Christians murderously targeted in places like Pakistan many times before.

    • Keys says

      Aug 6, 2016 at 3:31 pm

      Well said, Angemon !

    • Mubarak says

      Aug 6, 2016 at 5:30 pm

      The refutation of this highfalutin slogan – that there is no compulsion in religion (i.e. Islam) – is amply provided by the compulsive hatred the Qur’an summa summarum instills in its victims through the subliminal hypnotic recitations they submit to.

      • gravenimage says

        Aug 9, 2016 at 10:16 am

        Compulsion in Islam has nothing to do with “hypnotic recitations”–it has to do with Muslims harassing, abusing, oppressing, and murdering those who do not embrace it.

  2. Tom Davis says

    Aug 6, 2016 at 9:17 pm

    “… the lawyer decided to meet the chief warden of Tora Prison, where Hegazy had been held intermittently since 2013…”
    He had been held there intermittently not because he had been intermittently free but because he had been transferred between prisons to keep him away from his attorney and to prevent him from appearing in court. The judges in his case repeatedly denied the motions of his attorney when he failed to appear in court.

    “Despite Hegazy being of age (34), ‘his release was conditioned by the acceptance of his parents to keep him under their control,’ said a source, on condition of anonymity.”
    This is what broke him after 3 years in prison. After 3 years of daily beatings and torture, he could not face his parents, who had said they would kill him for leaving Islam. It was just too much.

    • gravenimage says

      Aug 7, 2016 at 8:11 pm

      Thanks for the additional information, Tom. Very grim.

  3. vcragain says

    Aug 7, 2016 at 6:38 am

    Don’t they realize he will be silently praying to the God he really believes in, nothing they can do to him will make him REALLY believe in Islam ever again ! He is likely just praying for release from the misery of his country & family. I do hope he can find a peaceful life from now on ! Egypt (& Islam) seems to be doing it’s very best to make the rest of the world despise it ! I certainly do !

    • Screeminmeeme says

      Aug 7, 2016 at 9:28 am

      Hegazy won’t get my condemnation. While I hope it would, I’m not so sure that my faith in Jesus Christ would stand up under such atrocities.

      Man looks on the outside but God looks at the heart. He knows those who are his.

      1Sa_16:7 But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD LOOKETH ON THE HEART. .

      • gravenimage says

        Aug 7, 2016 at 8:12 pm

        Well said. I’m not going to condemn the victims of Islam, either.

  4. billybob says

    Aug 7, 2016 at 6:57 am

    “Last thing I remember, I was
    Running for the door
    I had to find the passage back to the place I was before
    Relax, said the night man
    We are programmed to receive
    You can check out any time you like
    But you can never leave!”

    • gravenimage says

      Aug 7, 2016 at 8:17 pm

      Yes–that’s Islam, all right. “Hotel California” describes this perfectly.

  5. duh swami says

    Aug 7, 2016 at 8:12 am

    Why doesn’t YHVH protect Christians from the afflictions of Dajjal?
    YHVH seems as helpless as Allah… neither god lift one finger to stop murder, torture, abuse, or even catastrophic deceases…The gods must be helpless…praying to them is a waste of time…

    • Kay says

      Aug 7, 2016 at 11:15 am

      God does His part and we do ours.
      Praying is not a waste of time. Try it.

      Here is a story to think about:
      A missionary couple became surrounded by IS. Reaching to his supporters in US for prayer yet despairing, he asked that they pray his wife “just be shot,” not wanting her to be tortured and raped. The prayer partners could not pray that (ours is the God of life) and they prayed for life and safety. The group was rescued by Navy SEALS.
      One part of the meaning of the Incarnation is this: God works in concert with us. He is not distant and unknowable. He is near.

    • gravenimage says

      Aug 7, 2016 at 8:18 pm

      Swami, humans have free will–and can use that will for good *or* for evil.

  6. Florida Jim says

    Aug 7, 2016 at 10:46 am

    Is there one muslim anywhere we can trust? It appears they all lie at will, like Obama and Hillary, and will behead us when they feel safe or paradise is near. Sharia, Jihad,Taqiyya, dhimmitude and beheading are signs they are starting to retake the world block by block.

    • Daniel Triplett says

      Aug 7, 2016 at 11:00 pm

      No. There is not one Muslim anywhere you can trust. Their “deity” commands them to lie, and models for them how to do it.

      “Allah is the best of all deceivers.” Quran 3:54; 7:99; 8:30

  7. Alex says

    Aug 8, 2016 at 12:19 am

    Come on people the pope said ISLAM is the religion of peace !!! NOT

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