EGYPT: LAW GRANTING TWINS TO MUSLIM TO BE REVIEWED

Christian mother wins right to high court appeal regarding ruling that favored Muslim father.

ISTANBUL, February 20 (Compass Direct News) – Prosecutor General Abdel Meguid Mahmoud last week granted the mother of 14-year-old twins Andrew and Mario Medhat Ramses the right to appeal a custody decision awarding her sons to their Muslim father.

Muslim convert Medhat Ramses Labib gained custody of the boys last September, contrary to Article 20 of Egypt’s Personal Status Law, which states children should remain with their mother until age 15. The boys’ mother, Kamilia Lotfy Gaballah, won the right to appeal on Feb. 11.

“We all have a little bit of hope, new hope,” said George Ramses, the twins’ older brother. “Of course, they are a little afraid about everything, but generally they are excited.”

With support from the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), Gaballah will appeal the Family Court’s decision awarding custody to the father before the Court of Cassation. Family Court decisions are not usually given recourse to the Court of Cassation, one of Egypt’s highest courts, and require special referral from a public prosecutor.

EIPR Director Hossam Bahgat stressed that the Court of Cassation will be examining the law on which the decision was based, not the decision itself.

“The Court of Cassation will pronounce a decision on the legal rule that Christian children, when one of their parents converts to Islam, should be automatically moved to the Muslim parent’s custody,” he said. “So it is very important in terms of changing the legal rule, but according to the law it will not have a direct impact on Andrew and Mario themselves.”

Preliminary hearings are scheduled to begin on March 2.

The twins will celebrate their 15th birthday in June of this year. At 15, Egyptian children of divorcees have the legal right to choose which parent they want to live with. Ramses told Compass that he is skeptical about whether his brothers will be given this right.

“The whole law is that kids should spend the first 15 years with their mum, and then they get to choose who they want to live with,” Ramses said. “[Choosing] is the second part of the rule that was not applied to us, so we don’t know actually what will be the case.”

The boys’ father, Labib, converted to Islam in 1999 after divorcing Gaballah to marry another woman. In 2006 Labib altered the official religious status of the boys and later applied for custody.

 

Covenant Breaches

The boys are now at the center of two separate disputes, both of which have roots in the complex interaction between Islamic and secular law in Egypt: whether children should be automatically awarded to the Muslim parent, and whether they therefore should automatically convert to Islam.

Custody battles between Muslim fathers and Christian mothers have typically been instances where Islamic law has predominated over secular legislation. Sharia (Islamic law), which the Egyptian constitution declares as being the source of law, states that a non-Muslim should not have authority over a Muslim.

In the case of Andrew and Mario, this sharia provision meant that they should not be left under the jurisdiction of their non-Muslim mother. The automatic and compulsory conversion of the twins, following their father’s decision to become Muslim, is the second area of contention EIPR is working on behalf of Gaballah to resolve.

The issue once again shows the contradictory stances of Egyptian civil law, which reflects both freedom of religion and Islamic thought. A fatwa (religious edict) issued by Egypt’s Grand Mufti, Ali Gomaa, regarding the case of Andrew and Mario states, “The religion of the two children should follow their Muslim father’s, unless they change their religion with full will after puberty.”

Although this statement allows Andrew and Mario the right to choose their religion “after puberty,” conversion from Islam is not only extremely difficult in Egypt but also dangerous.

Egypt has ratified a number of human rights treaties allowing advocacy groups like EIPR recourse to international watchdogs and advisory bodies. One of these, the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights (ACHPR), has agreed to examine the case. The commission has asked both parties to submit written statements by March in preparation for an initial hearing in May.

The European Union of Coptic Organisations for Human Rights (EUCOHR) has also weighed in, petitioning the European Parliament for help.

“We have gone to the European Parliament with a legal document detailing about 30 to 40 breaches of international covenants like the International Declaration of Human Rights,” said Ibrahim Habib, vice-chairman of EUCOHR.

Habib said he hopes involving international bodies such as these will raise the profile of the case and put pressure on the Egyptian judiciary to rule impartially. Such attention could also have positive implications for the much harassed Coptic community at large.

The report filed by EUCOHR and the U. S. Coptic Foundation for Legal Assistance, which explores violations of such pacts as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ends with this statement:

“This is a call for justice and to save the two children from the coercion, persecution and injustice with which they are overburdened and, it is respectfully requested that a prompt action be taken to save those children and their future. Also, the annulment of the judgements against the two children is promptly requested.”  

Report from Compass Direct News

BANGLADESH: PASTOR’S WIFE GANG-RAPED, HOME ROBBED

Influential Muslim villagers, local media said to falsely blame Christians, Hindu.

VENNABARI, Bangladesh, January 20 (Compass Direct News) – The pastor of a Baptist church in this village about a 100 kilometers (62 miles) south of Dhaka said that earlier this month local Muslims tied him and his wife up, robbed his living quarters on the church property and gang-raped his wife.

The Rev. Shankar Hazra, 55, of Chaksing Baptist church in Gopalganj district, said that before leaving, the assailants desecrated the church building.

The night of the attack, the pastor said, he and his wife, 45, went out to a toilet outside their home at about 2 a.m. on Jan. 6.

“Suddenly a man loomed up from the darkness and thrust the snout of a homemade rifle at my chest and told me to keep mum, otherwise both of us would be killed,” Rev. Hazra told Compass. “Around seven to eight people swooped on us and tied me and my wife. They blindfolded my wife and took her inside the house.”

While Rev. Hazra was tied to a pillar on the porch of his house of corrugated tin and wood, the assailants took the keys of chests and trunks and looted valuables: gold and silver jewelry worth US$500, cash totaling US$300, a mobile phone, television, CD players, all their clothes except his cassock, and utensils.

“They even looted my daughters’ dresses,” Rev. Hazra told Compass. “After looting everything, they gang-raped my wife.”

The assailants also asked about the whereabouts of his two grown daughters, who had left the previous day after spending the Christmas and New Year holidays with their parents. Their daughters, ages 22 and 20, had returned to their studies in separate districts.

“If my daughters had been present in the house at that night, they would have been victims as their mother was,” Rev. Hazra said.

After the assailants left, Rev. Hazra managed to untie himself and found his wife lying unconscious on the bed, he said.

“My neighbors came and rushed her to a nearby hospital, and that hospital referred my wife to another big hospital in Gopalganj district because her condition was very serious,” he said.

The assailants also broke the door of the church building and urinated and defecated there, Rev. Hazra added.

 

Non-Muslims Blamed

Rev. Hazra and his wife said all of the assailants were Muslims, but that villagers tried to implicate non-Muslims and portray the attack as resulting from internal conflicts among Christians.

Police, influential villagers and local Muslim-owned media are trying to conceal likely anti-Christian motives for the crime, he said, by falsely accusing two Christians and a Hindu of participating – and labeling a local Baptist pastor as the “mastermind” of the attack. Police wrote the First Information Report (FIR) implicating the Christians and Hindu based on lies from villagers, and Rev. Hazra signed it without reading it due to his shaken state, he said.

Rev. Hazra’s wife, Depali Hazra, later filed an affidavit contesting the FIR in which the two Christians and one Hindu, along with a known criminal who is Muslim, were accused of the gang rape and theft. The Christians and Hindu were not involved in the rape and robbery, she reported in the affidavit.

“I was seriously ill after [the] gang rape, and my husband’s mind was unhinged at that time,” she reported. “Only [the] Muslim man Ilias Mridha and his yes-men did it. When I recuperated a little bit from illness, I came to know about the names of the Christians and Hindu in the case. Spontaneously and knowledgably I did this affidavit to get rid of those Christian and Hindu names from the case copy.”

Local police inspector Liakat Ali confirmed to Compass that non-Muslims had been implicated in the rape and theft charges filed at the police station. Other statements in the FIR – such as the number of assailants, four, rather than the seven or eight cited by the pastor – are at odds with Rev. Hazra’s account, further indicating that police relied on second-hand information from villagers rather than the experience related by the victims.

“We have arrested three people so far in connection with gang rape and looting out of four people mentioned in the FIR by Hazra,” said Ali. “Among those mentioned, two people are Christians, one Hindu and one Muslim. According to the case information, the mastermind of the incident is Monotosh Banarjy, a pastor of a Baptist church, who might not have been present at that time.”

There is no criminal record against the Christian arrested, Sushil Baroi, a Catholic, he said.

“But the arrested Muslim man, Ilias Mridha, is a criminal who had been arrested several times before,” said Ali.

Local Christians said Mridha, 38, who has been jailed several times, commits crimes under the direction of local influential persons.

Father Jacob Gobbi, head priest at Baniarchar Catholic Church, told Compass that Baroi was not involved in the gang rape and robbery.

“He is innocent, and we want that he should be released as soon as possible,” Fr. Gobbi said.

Rev. Hazra said he and his wife are living temporarily with her relatives as protection from further attacks at their church quarters.  

Report from Compass Direct News

BAPTIST PASTOR STILL MISSING AFTER TIJUANA KIDNAPPING

More than a week has passed since San Diego pastor Manuel Jesus Tec was kidnapped Oct. 21 in Tijuana, and his family still has not talked with or heard from him, reports Baptist Press.

Originally, the kidnappers demanded a $1-million ransom for Tec’s release, but in two calls Monday night, Oct. 27, the kidnappers lowered that figure to $500,000 and subsequently to $200,000.

“Last night, we also heard a recording of his voice saying he was OK, and he asked us to do all that the kidnappers told us to do because his life was at risk,” Tec’s 30-year-old son Johnny said Oct. 28.

“We are totally hopeful and faith-filled,” Johnny Tec said. “Mom is holding up pretty good. We’ve been having prayer meetings every night here at the house. We give credit to the prayers of so many people out there. We’re hearing from places all over the world where people are praying for us. I don’t know how they found out, but we’re hearing from people all over the U.S. and Mexico, from Japan, the Philippines and even Africa.

“Only God can give us joy in the middle of a storm like this,” Tec said. “But that’s what we’ve been experiencing — the comfort of God and the hope that He will bring our dad back soon.”

Pastor Manuel Tec, 59, was kidnapped after crossing the border from San Diego into Tijuana with wife Maria and his younger son Giovanni. Gunmen stopped the car around 5 a.m. and forcibly abducted Tec, but left his wife and son free and unhurt.

The kidnappers contacted the Tec family for the fourth time Sunday night, Oct. 26, “trying to be intimidating,” Johnny Tec said. He said the kidnappers have not allowed him or his mother to talk to Manuel since abducting him.

The Tecs first heard from the abductors on Oct. 21, the day of the kidnapping, when the kidnappers called the family three times — at 5:15 a.m., 11:45 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. to voice their demands.

“Every time they called, they got more aggressive and more graphic in their threats,” said Tec, adding that the family is in the dark as to why his father was targeted for kidnapping.

“He wasn’t famous so we don’t know why anyone would want to kidnap him. He was friendly, well-liked and popular with his church members and those who knew him. But we don’t know why someone would want to kidnap him for money, especially $1 million.”

Tec added that the kidnappers have instructed the family, “Keep cooperating with us and your dad will be OK.”

“They said to come up with the money -– that this wasn’t a game. They’ve also said they know all of the Tec brothers and sisters and would go after the entire family,” Johnny said.

Manuel and his wife have three sons and two daughters. Though he lives in Tijuana, the pastor travels regularly to his new church plant in San Diego, Iglesia Familiar y Vida. A graduate of the Dr. G.H. Lacy Baptist Seminary in Oaxaca, Mexico, Manuel has pastored numerous Baptist churches south of the border since 1981, his son Johnny said.

“We just say ‘gracias’ to Southern Baptists everywhere for praying during this crisis we’re going through,” Johnny Tec said. “Let Baptists know that their prayers are being heard. We can feel how God has strengthened us. We think God is setting the stage for one more of His miracles that will leave us all in awe. Something grand is going to come out of this to show the world the power of prayer and God.”

Tijuana increasingly has become known as a dangerous border town, with a growing number of kidnappings and murders — often with doctors and other white-collar professionals as targets. The escalating violence is blamed on gangs and drug traffickers. Authorities recently rounded up some of the kidnapping gangs.

“It’s getting worse,” Johnny Tec said. “A lot of people are fleeing the city because the violence has skyrocketed over the past five years. Tijuana’s an unsafe place to be, with a lot of evil on the streets. Ten people a day are showing up dead on the streets of Tijuana.”

Tec said demanding a $1 million — or even a $200,000 ransom — for a Baptist minister makes no sense.

“The first ransom proposals down here seem to always be for $1 million, no matter who they pick out,” said Tec, adding that the latest ransom demand of $200,000 is still “well out of our possibilities.”

Tec said his family has “come to the crossroads,” however, where it may have to begin bargaining with the kidnappers.

Report from the Christian Telegraph