The court of appeals in Assiut, Upper Egypt, last week approved a ruling by a previous lower court to sentence the 16-years-old Coptic student Gamal Abdu Massoud, from the village of Manqabad in Assiut, to three years in prison. Massoud was charged with disdaining Islam
The court of appeals in Assiut, Upper Egypt, last week approved a ruling by a previous lower court to sentence the 16-years-old Coptic student Gamal Abdu Massoud, from the village of Manqabad in Assiut, to three years in prison. Massoud was charged with disdaining Islam, on account of his posting offensive images of the Prophet Mohamed on his Facebook page last December.
The images had led to rioting by the Muslim villagers, who mobbed in front of Massoud’s school in Assuit in the village of Baheeg in Manqabad, Assiut, and set on fire seven houses belong to Coptic families there. The security authorities caught Massoud, who was prosecuted and charged with disdaining Islam and stirring sectarian sedition.
Worth noting is that, under Egyptian law, Massoud is underage and should not have been imprisoned but placed in a facility for juveniles.
WATANI International
11 June 2012
