By Essam Fadl
CAIRO: Six Christians who converted to Islam and then back to Christianity filed a complaint to the Prosecutor General against the interior minister and his assistant, the head of the Civil Status Organization, for not implementing a court order that allows them to be identified as Christians on their ID cards.
The complaint said that the six Copts — Dina Atteya, Mervat Rizk, Ibrahim Farouk, Housni Narouz, Essam Sadek and Mohamed El-Sadek — were given a final court ruling from the Administrative Court obliging the Civil Status Organization to change their religious affiliation in their IDs to Christians with their original names.
Both the organization and the ministry did not implement the court order.
The Coptic citizens urged Prosecutor General Abdel-Meguid Mahmoud to take all necessary legal action against Minister of Interior Mansour El-Essawy and his assistant who declined to implement the court order, which is considered a criminal offence.
“We called for moving the case against the minister based on Article 123 of the Penal Code that orders the imprisonment or firing of public servants who decline to implement court orders,” said lawyer Peter El-Naggar.
“The minister of interior promised earlier to implement the court order, but this did not happen and the Civil Status Organization is still reluctant to implement the court order that enables 2,000 ‘Christian returnees’ to register their real religion in their national IDs,” he added.
