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| Africa North |
| Egyptian writer may face jail for accusations of defaming religion |
| 2013-10-22 |
| [Al Ahram] Egyptian writer and human rights ...which are usually entirely different from personal liberty... activist Karam Saber will stand before a Beni Suef misdemeanor court on Tuesday to hear the decision regarding his appeal of a five-year sentence received last May on charges of defamation and contempt of religion. The case began in April 2011, Saber told Ahram Online, when individuals related to Islamist currents in Beni Suef filed a lawsuit accusing Saber of defaming religion in his short stories collection entitled Ayna Allah (Where's God?). Saber said the case did not move to court until the beginning of 2013, when Beni Suef's prosecutor turned the case over to the misdemeanor court. In May, he was sentenced in absentia to five years and a LE1000 bail. "I was shocked to hear that I was sentenced to five years. I thought they had forgotten the case, but they came and tried to arrest me. I refused to go with them as the law gives me eight days to appeal the sentence," Karam said. According to a statement made by a coalition of Egyptian right human rights organizations, the prosecutors undertaking the investigation consulted the church in Beni Suef as well as Al-Azhar to seek out their opinion as to whether the accusations were correct. The church told the prosecution that the content of Saber's literary work contradicted divine religions, ridiculed the divine, and invented stories that stray from noble and sophisticated literature. Al-Azhar affirmed the church's stance, stating that the work destroys intellectual values and tears apart the fabric of Egyptian society. |
| Posted by:Fred |