1st June, 2016
A Coptic human rights activist arrested this month by Egyptian security officials faces the possibility of life in prison on concocted charges because of his efforts to expose persecution of Christians, human rights activists said.
Mina Thabet, 26, director of the Minority and Religious Groups Department at the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms (ECRF), faces 10 charges filed against him under anti-terrorism laws that were signed into effect in August, 2015. The charges include “inciting youth to use force to overthrow the government” and “inciting terrorist attacks on police stations.”
Mohamed El-Messiry, a researcher at Amnesty International, said the charges against Thabet are meant to silence or punish him for documenting persecution of religious minorities in Egypt, especially Coptic Christians.
“The charges are completely false and trumped up. There is no evidence in the case against Mina,” El-Messiry said, adding that the prosecutor has filed the charges under the direct instruction of the National Security Agency (NSA), a division of the Ministry of the Interior. “The prosecutor is dependent entirely on the police investigations only, and this is a pattern in most of the political cases now…The prosecutor basically copied accusations from the police report and pasted them into (its) charges.”
Days before his arrest, Thabet told Morning Star News that he expected to be detained or jailed by security officials in the near future. Officers from the NSA had contacted him three times over the past several months, he said, and told him that if he didn’t stop his activities they would “teach him to behave.”
Thabet was arrested in the early morning hours of 13th May in his Dar Al-Salam apartment on the outskirts of Cairo. For 12 hours officials detained Thabet and refused to answer any questions about where he was. The next day Thabet appeared in court, and a judge issued a temporary detention order against him, which was extended for 15 days. He is now being held without bail in pretrial detention. There is no word on the date of his next court hearing.
El-Messiry called the evidence behind the charges against Mina “ridiculous.” It consisted of an illustration of the Virgin Mary, a copy of the International Covenant on Civil and Political rights, papers on religious minority groups and a paper on Egyptian political party Bread and Freedom, he said.
Thabet also has been charged with using threats of violence to prevent the president from performing his duties, membership in a terrorist or banned group, using the Internet to incite a terrorist act, inciting protests, spreading false information about the country meant to disrupt public order and damage national prestige, harming citizens and the public interest and possessing documents that would incite people to overthrow the government and change the constitution.
Amnesty International called Thabet a prisoner of conscience “detained solely for exercising his rights.” “He must be released immediately and unconditionally with all charges against him dropped,” a statement issued by the organisation declared.
Thabet’s arrest is part of a larger crack-down against human rights activists and advocates by the military dictatorship of Egypt, but it also sends a direct message to the Christian community of Egypt that delivers a hard blow, human rights activists said. Thabet worked tirelessly documenting not only persecution but the government’s apparent apathy toward resolving any religious minorities’ problems.
