» 01/14/2013 EGYPT Egypt, 15 years in prison for mother and seven children, converts to Christianity The case concerns Nadia Mohamed Ali, a mother of eight children, born Christian, but converted to Islam to marry her husband. After his death, she decides to return to her original religion with her children. The authorities accuse her of having changed names on documents to skip procedure.
Cairo (AsiaNews /
Agencies) - The criminal court of Beni Suef (115 km south of Cairo) has
sentenced an entire family to prison for converting to Christianity. Nadia
Mohamed Ali and her children Mohab, Maged, Sherif, Amira, Amir, and Nancy Ahmed Mohamed abdel-Wahab will spend 15 years in prison. Seven
other people involved in the case were sentenced to five years in prison.
The case of the
family of Nadia Ali Mohamed began in 2004 when, after the conversion, she and
her children decided to replace their Muslim names on their identity cards with
their Christian names and city of residence change. To
do this she was aided by seven Registry office employees e. Born
Christian, she had changed her religion to marry her husband Mustafa Mohamed
Abdel-Wahab. After
the man's death in 1991, Nadia decided to return to her religion of origins and
to push her seven children to convert. In
2006, one of the boys was arrested by police in an information center in the
city of Beni Suef. Suspicious
of the young man from the documents he as carrying, where he had changed its
name to Bishoy Malak Abdel-Massih, police agents interrogated him for hours
until he confessed his conversion to Christianity as desired by the mother. The
judges then decide to stop not only the woman, but all of her children and
seven clerks from the registration office, responsible for changing the
documents.
An
individuals religious faith is listed in Egyptian identity cards. Christians,
converted to Islam for various reasons that attempt to return to the religion
to which they belong have enormous difficulty in correcting their names on the
documents. This
leads many people to forge them, risking prison. The
reverse process, ie the transition from Christianity to Islam is not hindered,
and in many cases is favored by the very Registry officials.