CAIRO (AFP)
An Egyptian court on Sunday ordered two Coptic Christian rights activists to be freed pending formal charges, after they were accused of insulting Islam and held without trial for three months.
The Egyptian country director of the Middle East Christian Association (MECA) Adel Fawzi, 61, and the association's photographer Peter Ezzat, 35, were arrested on August 8.
The court said that "nothing justifies continuing their detention," and ordered the men freed pending official charges being brought by the state security service's investigating magistrate.
Informal accusations against the two, who worked for a British-based website, included sedition, propagating extremist ideas through the Internet and insulting religion.
A judicial source said at the time that the pair was arrested "for publishing articles and declarations that are damaging to Islam and insulting to Prophet Mohammed on the United Copts website."
Fawzi had also published a book called "Persecuted Copts."
Copts are estimated to form six to 10 percent of Egypt's 76 million people and are the largest Christian community in the Middle East. |
