CHRISTIAN MOTHER

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The Orthodox Christian News Service

Published by Compass Direct, November 29, 2003

CHRISTIAN MOTHER STILL JAILED IN EGYPT

One Convert Dies After Severe Beating

CAIRO, November 29 (Compass)—Five weeks after her arrest tipped off a major crackdown against Egyptian converts to Christianity, Miriam Girguis Makar was sent back to El-Kanater Women’s Prison outside Cairo for another 15 days.

Married with two daughters, Makar, 30, has been accused by security police investigators of falsifying Christian identity papers for herself and other former Muslims. When brought before the state prosecutor on November 20, she was remanded to jail until December 5.

At least 22 other Christians, some converts from Islam and others of Coptic descent, were detained and interrogated in the harsh sweep following Makar’s arrest. One convert died while in police custody, and the others face legal prosecution.

Under Egyptian law, Muslims are not allowed to change their religious identities to any other faith, although Christians are free to convert officially to Islam.

From a devout Muslim family, Makar came to faith in Christ more than seven years ago while living in Cairo. After her husband also became a baptized Christian, they decided in 1999 to secretly change their religious identities and move to Alexandria. There they joined a church, put their daughters into a Christian school, and he found work in a local hospital.

No one in their new city knew that Makar’s original name had been Sahar El-Sayed Abdel Ghany, or that her husband’s name was once Mohammed Ahmed Imam Kordy.

But on the afternoon of October 20, Makar was arrested by four plainclothes police at her home in Alexandria in front of her daughters Marina, 13, and Sara, 12. The officers produced no official arrest warrant from the public prosecutor, as required under Egyptian law.

When her husband, Yusuf Samuel Makari Suliman, 42, was summoned to the police station to “sign” for her release, he was also detained, and the two were transferred that night to the Civil Affairs Investigation Headquarters in Cairo.

The couple later learned that several individuals, including employees in the local civil records department, had been arrested days before on suspicion of helping former Muslims change to Christian identity papers. During harsh police interrogations, investigators had obtained the name of Miriam Makar.

According to Makari, the two were kept apart from each other in solitary confinement over the next three days and subjected to repeated interrogations, beatings and insults. “The conditions there were very bad,” he told Compass, “and sometimes we were badly treated and insulted in front of each other.”

“She was tortured more than me,” Makari declared. But he denied reports that his wife had been sexually abused either there or at Cairo’s El-Mosky police station, where they were held later.

Makari said police authorities were trying to force them to confess who had convinced them to change their beliefs and then helped them get their new Christian identities. “But they did not try to convince us to change back to Islam,” he said. “They know the truth, that we won’t go back.”

According to one of the released converts who spoke with Compass, one of the men detained with them at the El-Mosky police station died on either October 25 or 26.

The deceased was identified as Issam Abdul Fathr Mohammed, a former Muslim in his late 40s who had worked in the Azbakeya office of the Civil Records Department.

The deceased convert reportedly suffered from diabetes and other ailments, and was severely beaten along with other detainees after his arrest. “He was taken away from the police station in an ambulance,” said the source, who heard the next day that he had died at the hospital.

“He knew he had to go to the State Security to be questioned the next day,” the source said, “and he was very, very afraid.”

Most of the other detainees were released within a week after Fathr’s death, albeit with charges still pending against them. Each “suspect” paid from 100 to 500 Egyptian pounds ($16 to $81) bail. Makari was set free on November 1, he said.

Three of the accused men, identified as Samir Sa’ad, Sayed Abdel Afyfy and Aziz Zakhary Armanios, were left in detention at El-Mosky, and Makar and a woman named Reda Zaghoul were sent to El-Kanater Women’s Prison.

On November 22, Zaghoul and the three men were released by the public prosecutor, who demanded 2,000 Egyptian pounds ($325) bail from each person.

The couple’s daughters were reunited with their father on November 13, nearly two weeks after he was released and went into temporary hiding. Both he and his daughters have reportedly been allowed to visit Makar briefly during bi-weekly visiting hours at her prison.

Makari said he was not aware of any surveillance by the police since he had returned with his daughters to stay in their family home in Alexandria. “We are attending church services,” Makari told Compass. “We cannot go back to Islam.”

“I have put my hand in the hand of Jesus, and I can’t take it out and go back.”