Convert Released from Mental Hospital

(Compass) – Gasir Mohammed Mahmoud was discharged on June 9 from his locked psychiatric ward in Cairo and set free, five months after he was forcibly committed to a mental hospital for converting from Islam to Christianity. Mahmoud, 31, was tortured by security police and then beaten at times and given heavy doses of medication twice daily at the El-Khanka Hospital for Mental and Neurological Health. He was committed to the mental hospital in January after his adoptive Muslim parents became alarmed to learn that he had converted to Christianity two years earlier. Mahmoud’s supervising physician told him he would never be allowed to leave the hospital unless he came back to Islam. But a round of international publicity released in May focused considerable attention on the case, apparently convincing hospital authorities to discharge him.