"My name is Said Fayez; I am a lawyer – a court of appeals lawyer – an Egyptian lawyer. 
I am a human rights defence lawyer and a Coptic activist. I have looked after the rights of persecuted Copts in my country for eight years now. I’ve worked on very many such cases that have come up over the last eight years, which highlight the dilemmas Copts face in Egypt. From the time when the system generally protected Copts from exploitation, right up to the establishment of Islamic governments, or rather Islamized governments, as a consequence of which persecution “came out onto the streets”, creating something akin to an atmosphere of hate that we Copts now experience first hand here in Egypt". 


Q) Why did you choose to specialise in human rights? 

A) I hate injustice, so to begin with I wanted to bring justice back to the people, which is why I ended up liking my law studies. Then one day a human rights debating circle attracted my attention. On investigation what I saw appealed to me because I noticed that defending disadvantaged people around the world was something deeper/stronger than civil law. At the time it lost its raison d’être in a world of revolution. When I learned what human rights were about, and that there were international agreements, I realised that helping religious minorities, on an everyday basis, and wholly regain their rights was possible in Egypt. So my interest was greatly aroused, also because I am a Copt myself, which was yet another reason for my interest. I also soon realised that this subject was far more difficult than I had imagined it to be. I nevertheless made every effort to defend people, to give them back their rights, thanks to which I observed, and from experience learned, that I suddenly had to cease being an everyday lawyer, and become a warrior. And so I decided that I would fight to give people back their rights. 


Q) Were you ever blackmailed, one way or another? And if so, why? 

A) I was blackmailed on numerous occasions. As regards blood threats, I was threatened once,. It was when I was working on the Maher El Gohary case. Maher El Gohary was a proselyte [translators note: a person who has converted from one view or religion to another]. He was a Muslim who became a Christian. We brought his case to court in 2008. In order that he could fight for his rights, because the law stipulates, that what he did was his right. But then once we had brought the case to court, I was injured; myself and Maher and the professor’s friends who were working with me on the case. Apart from that, threats and unpleasant situations arose from time to time, though in 2010 an execution list was issued, issued by a national ‘army’ of Islamist, and included several Copt activists; my name was twentieth on that list. This happened as a consequence of an article that I had written about a girl “proselyte” titled “Christine means Christian, Source of the Problem”. And so they decided that I must die because I defend “proselytes”. The list was reissued in 2011, on January 5th or 3rd; the list was reissued under the patronage of Al Qaeda. I continued to be blackmailed and threatened. 

The last thing that reached me – because not everything reaches me, nor do I know about everything – was that the Salafists [a Muslim religious and political movement who promote a return to the roots of the faith, as practiced by its founders] began making a film about a group of people that they were trying to track down/sentenced by them, because of their fight for Coptic rights, which they think is my way of aiming to divide Egypt for no other reason, than my talking about the presence of Coptic citizens, who have full residence rights and are not second class citizens. 


Q) Is there a difference in approach to human rights before and after the revolution? 

A) Yes, before the revolution we had a system that clearly respected the limits of the law. But that system was fully aware of the authority, for example of the United Nations Organisation, and other countries around the world, to which it was answerable, in accordance with international agreements. 

However presently the problem is far greater. Human rights violations now occur in total contravention of existing laws, and all international agreements. We observe how people come out and say what is or is not allowed and thereby gains public support. 
Such as… I will give you an example. There is a girl from Matrouh. [Marsa Matrouh – Egyptian city, administrative centre, capital of the Matrouh Governorate. Mediterranean costal port town in the north-west of the country]. That constrained fourteen year old girl, has disappeared, as far as the law is concerned she cannot marry before she turns eighteen. Based on international agreements, she cannot marry before she is eighteen years old. She is also disallowed, legally disallowed, from changing her religion before her eighteenth birthday. So she has four years to go. It would be a violation. So if we begin to claim that this is a violation and we begin to talk with human rights organisations, they begin to put pressure on us, to find out what is happening with her, whether she had been abducted, or raped, whether she had been reported – we wanted to find out where she is. So we were taken aback, when the Salafists issued a statement, claiming the girl had converted to Islam – which is illegal – and had become a Muslim’s wife – which is also illegal. They caution both the Church and human rights organisations to think twice about supporting her. So if we were to talk today about law violations, we could say that international agreements are also being violated in equal measure, so that they are in effect pushing legitimacy out onto the Egyptian street, because, the word “legitimacy” emerges out of all this. Consequently the situation becomes more difficult and dangerous, because subsequent amendments might come up, that they will want to introduce very shortly. They will impose amendments in agreements, but of course without changing their “legitimacy”. I believe that this will be the biggest violation of all the agreements that have been drawn up to date. 


Q) Could you tell us about the family that came today? Towards the end of the day. 

A) OK. But I would like to begin with an important introduction. Cases of forced conversions to Islam began appearing in Egypt at the beginning of the nineteen seventies; ever since Islamic groups and sharia groups appeared on the scene. These cases all came about under the auspices of the National Security Agency. Perhaps the National Security Agency also had its own reasons for doing so. It was all wisely structured. I mean to say, that in doing evil, they did it in accordance with the law, so that none of us could say or do anything or even raise a finger against anything they did. 

One would learn of a girl, an adult that had disappeared. You would hear nothing from her for a time. Then we would learn that that very same girl had converted to Islam. 
Nobody could do anything about it, because the girl was sane and an adult, so everything was legal. After the revolution and the demise of the National Security Agency, Salafists – a product of the National Security Agency – became the opposition force to the Muslim Brotherhood. But when the National Security Agency fell, the Salafists began to operate according to their own rules. 

Islamic cells, presently in Egypt, also work according to their own rules. So after the revolution we noticed how their interest turned towards eleven, twelve and thirteen year olds. There is a whole group of these girls who have completely disappeared. It’s an international crime that should be named for what it is: kidnapping - such that the person disappears and nobody knows anything about her. For example, my daughter disappeared this morning, everything was fine, everything pretty and trim, my daughter in my arms that very morning, and then she is suddenly gone. I don’t know whether she is alive, or not, whether somebody is trying to sell her, and so on. There are very many such Islamic cells in Egypt, fully occupied with kidnapping Coptic girls. 

It’s all happening with the support of certain leaders who call themselves… leaders, Muslim leaders, best not said … better to call things by name. There are also countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, who do similar things, except they describe it as “a calling”, “a calling to Islam”. It’s a crime - a multi-faceted crime. Disappearances, blackmail and extortion. Nobody knows the consequences. We learned about the scale of the problem from the girls that returned. How they lie in wait for such a girl, right up to the moment of her disappearance, for those three or four months, five months, six months. How they exert pressure on her. Let’s take an example from last year. The girl lived in the town of Aszer [Full town name is Aszer men Ramadan; meaning 10th of a Ramadan], her name was Jacqueline Ibrahim. Jacqueline Ibrahim was persecuted by somebody named Szukri Abdel Fattah. He forced her to leave her home. Once she had left, the harassing phase began. 

“If you go back I’ll kill you… if you go back anything might happen to you”, and then the pressure phase, that lasted twenty-five days… by the Salafists from Alexandria. Everything to force her to go to the Al-Azhar [Centre of Islamic learning and University in Cairo] and declare her conversion to Islam. An example of total violation of her faith and convictions, denying her any opportunity to discover, and herself declare, what she wants. Our basic approach acknowledges everybody’s right to freedom of conviction and beliefs, as they relate to religious doctrine. Our basic approach acknowledges that everybody has the right to choose what they want, and not be coerced to make choices. What is happening in Egypt is exactly that, coercion. And that is the greatest catastrophe. As a result of these cases with underage girls, as for example with Nadia Makram… a very serious, very serious case, that of Nadia Makram, a fourteen year old girl, who quite simply disappeared one day. Her mother looked for her, and is well aware that she had been kidnapped by a forty-eight-year-old man. And so she rushes to find out what had happened, only to learn, from his siblings, that he had married her. Legally, the act is inadmissible. And any sexual relations with her will be regarded as rape, even if she acquiesces. That is Egyptian law. 

Because? Because she is underage, and that means she is incapable of making such a conscious decision, which is why it is rape. 

Up to now, for over a year, we have been unable to bring criminal charges against this man, even though we know his whereabouts and that of his family. We are unable to carry this out. We were unable to meet the girl throughout the whole of last year, even to spend five minutes with her. To ask her what she really wants, and how she feels. Nadia is not the only one. 

There are many other similar cases. For example Marina Hani. Marina Hani is also an underage seventeen-year-old. 

She disappeared. We tried to find out all we could about her, whether she is alive, or perhaps she is dead, anything. The situation is difficult. Egypt’s legal fraternity also show signs of religious scruples, so that when we begin talking with them, when we begin to talk, their religious scruples come very strongly to the fore. Let me give you an example from 2009 at a police station in Ain Szams there was an underage girl with a boy. The boy who was with her was arrested and taken to the police station. The prosecutor, the Public Prosecutor General, released him. So we went to discuss the situation with him. “How could you have released him?” – “Because I made enquiries at Al-Azhar about whether the marriage was legal or not, and Al-Azhar ruled, that the marriage is legal”. – But Sir, it is, however, against the law because article of such and such children’s statute rules otherwise. And according to criminal law the blame lies with the detaining party.” His answer was very strange: “Would you entertain to me that I should act according to a law that would require me to deny my faith?” That is when I became angry and answered him: “No, of course we would not allow it. I would only ask you to arrest the girl on adultery charges, because according to my religious scruples and religious doctrine, she married a non-believer which means adultery/betrayal.” He replied: “Sir, are things as you describe them?” I answered: “I assume that we are not in Al-Azhar, that we are in a court of law, that judges its citizens on the basis of their actions, whilst you sir, are presently placing your religious beliefs above the law. Now that is a totally different matter; the issue much more serious.” 

The case became seriously complex. Finally, despite the prosecutor’s prerogative and authority, the girl remained missing, and to this day we know nothing about her. 


Q) Do you know of any statistics that record the annual number of such kidnappings? Are there any such statistics, or is it difficult to ascertain? 

A) No, but it is possible to give an approximate number, though it will most definitely not be accurate. 


Q) In that case approximately how many? 

A) The number of such cases… Before the revolution it could have been six or seven girls throughout Egypt. But after the revolution the numbers greatly increased, well into the thousands. But this is not about girls converting to Islam, but about girls suddenly disappearing, and nobody knowing anything about them. 


Q) How many of these cases have you handled, of these disappearances? 

A) There are many such cases. You refer to those that I have had handled, I believe about three hundred and eighteen cases, something around that number. 

A large number of lawyers work on such cases. But it’s often not their specialisation. That’s how it is when somebody’s daughter is kidnapped; they will turn to the nearest lawyer, who will not necessarily have any experience of such matters, who might be a Muslim – though that is not an issue. To get a good idea of these cases, it’s best to look at the numbers that reach the courts every day, throughout Egypt, or at least on a weekly basis. There are at least one, two or three cases. What reaches the media amounts to no more than about 15% of what really happens. 


Q) Do the media talk about this? 

A) The Coptic media is very weak and official media don’t mention it. Satellite channels, perhaps recently, yes they reported on about one or two cases from the dozens of cases. It comes down to a news item about which a small report is prepared, screened, and that’s it. End of the story. 


Q) Could you tell us something about the cases of girls who had managed to escape, and what they say? 

A) Yes, I can, though I cannot give you all the details, because there are names that I can’t divulge, because some enquiries have not yet been completed. When we do complete them we will report all the details to the whole world. Because when something involves members of parliament, and high ranking politicians and businessmen who kidnap Coptic girls and are all involved in all of this, our facts must be very clear to support the accusations when we go public with these affairs. We genuinely have the information and some of the evidence and we are working on bringing this all together, to prove it. 


Q) Could you tell us, the girls that managed to get back, did they describe what happened? 

A) There is much to tell, for example one case that I worked on was a Christian girl who taught at the institute and then suddenly disappeared. She managed to get back after a while so that we found out who was behind all this. And he married her. She returned to her parents pregnant. He kept her family under observation for some time until he succeeded in organising a gang of hooligans who entered the girl’s house and once again took the girl from her parents by force. When I studied this man and his story I noticed that he was twenty-nine years old, had a higher education diploma, which means that he was from the middle class. The man, though only twenty-nine years old, was listed in the registry office as having been married six times. Five of those was with a Christian who had converted to Islam. You can imagine what happened. What was strange was that these marriages lasted a year, after which they would gather their belongings and go to Saudi Arabia, to return after the divorce. This was one of the more difficult cases. What I want to say is that there exists a kind of trade in humans, or trade in women. 


Q) Those kidnapped girls who converted to Islam, can they become Christians once they return to their families? 

A) We have a problem that when the girl is pregnant her child would be taken away from her because according to Egyptian law, small children remain with the parents who practice the “true faith”- and according to them that faith is Islam. So the situation is such that she will have to be prepared to give up her child – which we all know no mother would want. This effectively forces her to continue. 

As concerns people returning to Christianity, we have submitted around five thousand applications in the last eighteen months for the single purpose of obtaining the right for Christians to return to their Christian faith. 

Of course this all generates certain problems, difficulties and leads to harassment by fanatics who have learned about people who have converted to Islam, and now want or dare to return to Christianity. 


Q) There are cases in other Muslim countries, of Christian girls being kidnapped and placed in brothels for the pleasure of wealthy Muslims. Does that also apply to Egypt? 

A) Egyptian Muslim cells work in a variety of ways. There are all sorts of means of attracting these girls: especially by fooling them, which, in the end, usually all leads to a situation in which they have no choice but to convert to Islam. Once that happens everything in life becomes difficult and complicated: Difficult for her to return to the family home, difficult for her to appear in public, unless, of course, she marries. There are also instances, several in fact, where they truly engage in prostitution. There was a girl who fell in love with a Muslim, so she ran away from her family home without being kidnapped or anything like that. She ran away from her family home. He was with her for about three months, then he became bored and so he threw her out onto the streets. His friend, also a Muslim, refused to allow it, so he took her in and gave her work, as a prostitute so that she would have enough to live on. 


Q) We see a lot of people thrown out onto the streets, begging, with children, etc. Both Muslims and Christians. How this has comes about? 

A) It concerns divorce. According to Muslim law a man can marry more than one woman. He can have up to four wives simultaneously. He can also divorce any one of them, even if they have been married for just a couple of hours or after three, four months. When he becomes bored with her, he leaves her… that is how things are in Egypt and he exploits the law that allows him to seek a divorce at any moment; that allows him to marry two, three, four women. However the girls on the streets, or the women on the streets who beg – some do it quite simply as a profession; begging enables them to survive. 

There are also cases where married couples divorce and their children end up on the streets, and take up begging. There are also cases of women, who fall in love, leave their family to go to him, marry, and then he leaves them, and so their fairy story ends. 
But there is no divorce in Christianity. In Christianity no grounds exist for a divorce. 


Q) Would you like to add something to what we’ve talked about? 

A) No I don’t want to add anything. Though if we are talking about those kidnappings, and about forcing people to change their faith, then we really are talking about serious crimes and our problem is that these are being committed under the auspices of religion. I want to point out the difference between Islam and people who claim to be Muslims. 

Islam is the religion of a group of people who inhabit the earth with us, and are called Muslims. There are among them some very peace loving people; there are also among them some very good people who care about ethical principles that govern all men in spite of differences of character, origin, colour. There is yet another group, whom I believe, are against humanity, and in that they are dangerous. I call them “Islamists”: people who call themselves Muslim but who are against humanity because they despise everybody who are not like them. And so, therein lies the danger. When somebody has very strong racist inclinations which he emanates all around, then we are in danger. Egyptian Copts come across many problems on their path. Formerly our problems were systemic. The system would exploit us as a political card. There is an accident, they sabotage something, there are victims, all because, Egypt’s system wishes to exert influence on the West in order to obtain whatever it needs. But we had no problems with our Muslim neighbours. In other words the system discriminated us, but not Egypt. 

Presently, they emanate something that is hateful towards their fellow human beings, and that is dangerous. It is something that has perhaps not spread to the streets so much, but it will happen shortly if they remain where they are presently and remain as forceful.