A Muslim sheikh jailed in Egypt for 18
months has declared from his prison cell
that he is under arrest for “insulting
Islam” by becoming a Christian.
Egypt’s secret police transferred Bahaa
el-Din Ahmed Hussein el-Akkad, 57, to
the Wadi el-Natroun Prison last month.
He was told he would remain there
indefinitely unless he agreed to work as
a government informer against other converts to Christianity.
According to the prisoner’s Cairo
attorney, Athanasius William, his client
remains incarcerated in this desert
prison “only because he has chosen a
different belief, to be a Christian.”
El-Akkad was imprisoned without
charges for more than a year after
officials of the State Security
Investigation (SSI) arrested him in Cairo
on April 6, 2005.
Although subjected to repeated
interrogations, the former Muslim was
never told the specific accusations
against him. But several of his cellmates
spread rumors that he was converting
and baptizing people into Christianity, sparking verbal abuse and at least one
severe beating from a fellow prisoner.
When the courts finally ordered El-
Akkad’s release from provisional
detention 10 weeks ago, SSI authorities
deliberately ignored the ruling. Instead,
they held him in their Gaber Ibn Hayyan
office in Giza and then transferred him to the Wadi el-Natroun Prison, located 60
miles north of Cairo along the highway
to Alexandria.
William told Compass it was strictly
illegal for the SSI to have re-arrested El-
Akkad and jailed him indefinitely
“without the orders of a legally
authorized official,” as required under
Article 280 of the Egyptian penalty laws.
Disillusioned with Islam
In a series of handwritten notes
smuggled out of prison in recent
months and obtained by Compass, El-
Akkad declared that he had “chosen the
Christian faith” after years of research on
Islam.
For more than 20 years, the former
sheikh was a member of the
fundamentalist Islamic group Tabligh
and Da’wa, which actively proselytized
non-Muslims but strictly opposed
violence. He also led a mosque community in Al-Haram, in the Giza area
adjacent to Cairo. In 1994 he had
published, Islam: the Religion, a 500-
page book reviewing the traditional
beliefs of the Islamic faith.
But he became disillusioned, and five
years ago the sheikh said he began to
pray that he could somehow know God
personally. It was not until January 2005
that he talked for the first time with
someone who explained the tenets of the Christian faith to him. He began
intensive study of Christian Scripture, and
within weeks he became a follower of
“This is a proof to all Muslims,” El-Akkad
wrote, “that the person who studies the
two religions from an objective and
serious perspective will choose the
Christian approach.”
But within two months, word of El-
Akkad’s conversion to Christianity had
reached the SSI, and secret police picked
him up without warning from his private
trade office.
Family Waits in Vain
After six weeks in SSI detention, El-Akkad
was sent to Cairo’s Tora Mazraa Prison.
When his lawyer, William, finally
obtained power of attorney to visit the
convert, he was told he was incarcerated
under emergency law provisions on suspicion of “committing blasphemy
against Islam.”
For the following year, El-Akkad’s
detention was renewed every 45 days
under emergency law provisions, even
though he still had not been formally
charged.
But this past July, authorities instituted a
new law restricting provisional detention
regulations, specifying that the length of
provisional detention for a misdemeanor
should not, “whatever the
circumstances,” exceed six months.
El-Akkad was accused of “insulting a
heavenly religion,” a misdemeanor
under Article 98-F of the Egyptian penal
code. So a Cairo court ordered him
released on July 30.
After learning of the court-ordered
release, El-Akkad’s wife and three
children waited in vain for him to return
home. Ten days later, William finally
confirmed that although the convert had
been released from prison, he remained in SSI custody in Giza.
Desert Prison
By mid-September, authorities
transferred El-Akkad to the maximum
security Wadi el-Natroun Prison, where
the majority of Egyptian Islamists
sentenced for anti-government activities
are incarcerated.
Notorious for its Spartan conditions in
the desert, the prison facility houses its
prisoners in small cells measuring one
by two meters.
According to William, his client is in
weak health from prison, suffering from
high blood pressure as well as skin
diseases caused by extreme
temperatures, unsanitary cell conditions
and bites from insects and small reptiles
“He is locked in a place where he may
die because his age, body and mind
cannot tolerate this cruelty and
stubbornness of the state security
authorities,” William said.
The attorney has received no response
from a petition he filed to Attorney
General Abdel Meguid Mahmoud on
September 4 citing serious legal
violations in El-Akkad’s case.
Although Egypt’s Christian citizens are
free to embrace Islam and obtain legal
Muslim identities, Muslim citizens are not
allowed to change their religious
identity. Those who become Christians
are subjected to severe harassment by the SSI, which often arrests converts for
either insulting Islam or “threatening
national security.”
