U.S. Copts Association

Defense claims anti-Christian bias motivated ‘Islamic’ verdict.

October 26 (Compass) - A U.S. Christian faces one year in prison after a trial in which he was accused of raping and beating Magda Refaat Gayed at his Cairo shelter for troubled women.

Following last month’s final hearing in the case of Shafik Saleh Shafik, the three judges of Cairo’s Abbassiya Criminal Court No. 15 had postponed the verdict three times. Finally, on October 20, the court sentenced Shafik, who also holds Egyptian citizenship, to one year in prison. But so far they have failed to release the written verdict.

According to one defense lawyer, a written verdict detailing the charges on which Shafik has been found guilty must be produced within 30 days, or the case will be retried.

“I am astonished,” defense lawyer Naguib Gabriel told Compass. The defense had expected Shafik to be found innocent after Egypt’s top forensic expert, Dr. Ayman Soda, testified last month on the Christian’s behalf.

Soda had noted inconsistencies in Gayed’s claims that she escaped from the second story of Shafik’s shelter while bound hand and foot. The medical expert had also pointed out procedural failings on the part of the court doctor.

After listening to Soda’s testimony, the court’s top judge had reportedly commented, “This would mean everything [i.e., charges against Shafik] is a lie.”

Gayed had accused Shafik of raping her, but initial tests showed that she had not been violated sexually.

Defense lawyers believe that the guilty verdict was based on religious prejudice, stating that since the first hearing in September 2004, the court had shown a consistent pro-Islamic bias.

In direct violation of Egyptian law, which forbids minors to carry out any legal activity including conversion, the state prosecutor had ordered 17-year-old Gayed be taken to the Islamic center at Al-Azhar to convert officially to Islam. The court also failed to return Gayed to her Christian family.

Shafik agreed that the court’s decision was religiously motivated, saying, “Now we are guessing the [top] judge, he understood the whole time that I am innocent. But the other two with him, they are very Islamic, so they are thinking they want to put me in jail.”

The support of two of the three judges was necessary for the court to give a verdict.
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