Two Christian converts from Islam who were locked in an Egyptian prison and held for three years without trial have been released, religious rights advocates said.
Abdulbaqi Saeed Abdo and Nour Girgis were released on Jan. 25. Both had been held in “pre-trial detention” since 2021 on blasphemy charges.
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Abdo, who is from Yemen and had U.N. refugee status because of persecution he suffered there, has fled to Canada where he has been reunited with his family. Human rights activists have not publicly released the location of Girgis, who still has charges against him.
Agents from Egypt’s National Security Agency (NSA) raided Abdo’s home in December 2021, seized three laptops and arrested him. The raid on Abdo’s home happened after he appeared on a Christian television channel to discuss persecution of Christians in Yemen.
Egyptian authorities later identified Abdo as a member of a private Facebook group for converts from Islam and charged him with “joining a terrorist group with knowledge of its purposes” and “contempt of the Islamic religion.” Police also identified Girgis as a member of the alleged group and arrested him under the same charges.
Human rights advocates inside Egypt and abroad said the charges against the two Christians were dubious at best. Sean Nelson, legal counsel for Global Religious Freedom for Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International, who was part of a team to free them, said it was “astonishing” Abdo was charged for being on Facebook.
‘No reason to detain’
“They had no reason to detain him in the first place,” Nelson told Morning Star News. “He committed no crime in the first place. We are very happy he has been released. He has been there for over three years for his part in a Christian Facebook group.”
The illegality of the charges was compounded by the length of time the men were held, presumably awaiting trial, rights advocates said. Under Egyptian criminal law, the longest someone can be held without trial for a serious felony is two years. Abdo and Girgis should have been released or had their trials start by December 2023, but officials in the Interior Ministry who routinely violate Egyptian law refused to release them, according to right advocates.
Egypt ranked 40th on Open Doors’ 2025 World Watch List of the 50 countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian.
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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written and originally published by Morning Star News.
