Authorities Refuse to Charge Christian Prisoner

(Compass) – An Egyptian Christian jailed without charges for 19 months has become emotionally disturbed and lost vision in one eye from torture and lack of medical treatment, his widowed mother declared last week. Hany Samir Tawfik, 28, has been continuously jailed since March 2003. After being deported back to Egypt from Saudi Arabia on June 15, 2002, he was arrested at the Cairo international airport upon his return and detained for 52 days. Tawfik was then re-arrested by police seven months later because he refused their demands to spy on an evangelical Christian pastor, Tawfik’s family and church sources said. Despite direct appeals by Tawfik’s widowed mother to Interior Minister Habib el-Adly, authorities refuse to release him or make public his alleged “crimes.” Tawfik’s mother told Compass that prison authorities had taken away his Bible and destroyed it in front of him. “He said they told him he was a ‘special’ case, so they had been told to give him extra suffering.”