(Aug. 17, 2007) – Egyptian police arrested the leader of a Christian rights group last week after he made supportive and highly conspicuous contact with a controversial Muslim convert to Christianity, reported U.S.-based watchdog Compass Direct News.

 

Officials from the State Security Investigation (SSI), Egypt’s security police, reportedly bound and blindfolded Dr. Adel Fawzy Faltas, 61, while ransacking his home in Cairo’s Zamalek neighborhood and confiscating multiple computers along with other items.

 

Faltas is president of the Egyptian branch of the Middle East Christian Association (MECA), a Canada-based religious liberties and human rights group. Also arrested with Faltas was his co-worker at MECA, Peter Ezzat, while the rest of MECA’s leaders went into hiding, Compass reported.

The arrests were apparently attributable in part to Faltas’ recent advocacy on behalf of Mohammed Ahmed Hegazy, a Muslim-turned-Christian journalist and political activist who days earlier had filed suit in Egypt to legally change his identification card to Christian.

 

Hegazy converted to Christianity four years ago because he believed that love and peace were the purposes of religion and he found in Christianity what he had long been seeking, Reuters reported. After his wife became pregnant earlier this year though, Hegazy realized his child would be born under a Muslim identity.

 

His subsequent attempt to legally register a change in his religion was rejected by the Interior Ministry, which is why Hegazy made his decision to file suit last week, asking the Egyptian courts to recognize his conversion in an unprecedented move that would legally replace his Muslim identity in Egypt with a Christian one.

 

After appearing before the court, Hegazy spent the weekend in the home of Faltas, who organized a high-publicity online chat session with Hegazy, reported Compass.

 

Once Egyptian authorities arrested Faltas, Hegazy was forced into hiding and reportedly under constant threat of attack. Reuters reported last week that Hegazy was sleeping in a different place every night.

 

Hegazy’s lawyer, Mamdouh Nakhla, quit the case amid death threats from Egyptian police and public outrage while another lawyer, Ramses Raouf el-Nagar, stepped up and indicated he will represent Hegazy, reported Compass.

 

The case of Hegazy has garnered hostile front-page treatment in some Egyptian newspapers.

 

Although no formal charges against Faltas and Ezzat have been announced, Christian human rights group Christian Solidarity International (CSI) reported a security official’s claim that both men had insulted Islam, preached Christianity, incited Christian-Muslim confrontation and maintained an unlawful association with a foreign organization.

 

The two Christians are being held incommunicado at the Lazoghly Square headquarters of the SSI where, according to CSI, political prisoners are routinely tortured within the first three days of incarceration.

 

In a letter to U.S. President Bush last Friday, CSI-USA’s Chairman Dr. John Eibner stated that the arrests of the two Christian human rights leaders “take place against a backdrop of increasing state-sponsored persecution of Christians in Egypt.”

 

Although the main cause for the police action against MECA’s leaders in Egypt appeared to be related to the organization’s work on behalf of Hegazy, other factors involving MECA may have contributed.

 

According to Compass, MECA’s president, Nader Fawzy, said lawyers from his group filed suit against the Egyptian government last month seeking compensation for Christians whose village was destroyed in a January 2000 rampage by Muslims that left 21 Christians dead. The Cairo court postponed ruling on the case until September.