Two Coptic Children Arrested in Egypt for ‘Insulting Islam’
Two Coptic Children Arrested in Egypt for ‘Insulting Islam’ - Politics - Egypt - Ahram Online
Beni Suef Imam files law suit against two Christian boys for allegedly tearing up Quranic verses; father of children pleas kids are illiterate and were playing with papers near a garbage dump
Two Coptic Christian children Nabil Nagy Rizk, 10, and Mina Nady Farag, 9, were arrested, Tuesday, for insulting religion in the Upper Egyptian governorate of Beni Suef, after the imam of their local mosque filed a complaint against them.
By order of the prosecution the two boys are now being held in the Beni Suef juvenile detention pending further investigation on Sunday.
Ibrahim Mohamed Ali, the village imam, accused the children of tearing up pages of the Quran.
According to Ahram Online reporter in the area, Ali initially took the children to the church and requested that the priest punish them.
Unsatisfied with the church’s decision not to castigate the two boys, Ali, together with three other villagers, turned to the courts.
Nabil’s father Nagy Rizk defended the action of the boys in a public statement, explaining that they are illiterate and therefore did not know the content of the papers which they found in a small white bag, as they were playing near a pile of rubbish in the street.
The events in Beni Suef come after a wave of arrests across Egypt of several individuals after they were accused by others of “committing blasphemy.”
Most of those arrested were Copts accused of “insulting Islam.”