CAIRO: Authorities have released two young men detained for 18 months without trial or charge for allegedly helping a woman who converted from Islam to Christianity forge a new identity card.
A Cairo court ordered the men, Christians Wael Aziz and Rumani Fuad, freed on Tuesday because no official charges were brought against them, a court official said on Wednesday.
Their detention had been repeatedly renewed for six weeks since their arrest in 2006, Aziz told AFP.
The men were unofficially accused of forging the identity card of an Egyptian Muslim woman who converted to Christianity.
It is almost impossible for Egyptians converting to Christianity to have their ID cards changed as the conversion is considered apostasy in the Muslim country.
New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) last year decried state reluctance to allow citizens to put their religion of choice on national identity cards.
Egyptians over 16 must have an ID card which mentions religious belief, but the interior ministry systematically prevents converts from Islam from registering their belief or just putting nothing, HRW and EIPR said.
Hossam Bahgat of the EIPR on Wednesday slammed the abuse of the use of detention without charge in Egypt so as to prevent the accused appearing in court.
Any person criminally convicted for having obtained forged identity documents solely because of the government s refusal to allow them to identify themselves as converts from Islam should be exonerated, he told AFP.
Without official ID cards, Egyptians cannot apply for jobs, buy property, open bank accounts or register their children in schools. They are also subject to arrest for not carrying valid identity papers. -AFP
