Christian Mother Arrested to Cover-Up the Scandal of Exposing the Civil Registry’s Fraud

The Civil Registry had forged the conversion of two Coptic children aged 6 and 14, in spite of having a Christian father. Emile and Refka Shenouda filed a lawsuit 3 weeks ago against the Interior Ministry accusing the Civil Registry of committing forgery by registering them as Muslims, although they are born Christians and have never converted into Islam.

Suhair Abdo, the 'Christian revert' mother of the two children was arrested yesterday by the security authorities, She is now, and after 4 years of reverting back to Christianity, accused of forgery by claiming to be a Christian!!

Ms.Suhair Abdo married Emile Saad in church, and both had children Rami, born 5/10/1988 and Refka 30/10/1983. After a marital dispute with her husband, the mother converted into Islam on 10/8/1994, the children however continued to live with their Christian father.

The mother returned back to her husband in 2001 after reverting back to Christianity, a certificate was issued to her by the competent authority of the Coptic Patriarchate, confirming its acceptance of her return to Christianity. Accordingly, Sohair Abdo was able in 2004 to get her national identification number document showing her Christian affiliation.

However, the big surprise came when her children went to get their national identification number document after reaching the age of 16 years!!!

In 2006 when they applied to get copies of their birth certificate which are necessary for the issuance of the new national identification number, they found out that they were registered as Muslims under the new names of Rami and Refka Hussein Elsayed, although their father's name is Emil Asaad.

On inspecting the documents of their conversion into Islam, it was discovered that Ramy converted in 1995, being 6 years at the time, and Refka in 1997 being 14 years, which is under the age of 16 years. This was taken as proof of forgery committed by the Civil Registry against the two children.

Surprisingly, when the mother converted into Islam her documents showed that she was the only one in the family who changed her name, in addition, a letter sent in 2006 from the Cairo State Security to the Director of Administrative Affairs stating that the children did not convert into Islam.

Their lawyer Peter Elnaggar pointed out that there is no official extract from the Civil Registry to the effect that there was any change in the name of the father or the two children in the files of Islam Converts.

Elnaggar said that they made a request to the Civil Registry to correct the error, however, it was rejected on grounds that the 'mother converted to Islam'!!!

The filed lawsuit requested the Interior Minister in his capacity of being in charge of amending the names data and as head of the Civil Registry to correct the error.

Observers commented that the Security authorities by arresting mother Sohair Abdo is trying to cover-up the scandal of forgery and entrapping Christians into Islam through this method, besides using it as a mean to pressurize the family into dropping the case against the Civil Registry.

But where does this leave children Ramy and Refka? Christians or Muslims?