An Egyptian court sentenced two Egyptian-American couples on Thursday to two years in prison in a high profile illegal adoption case, a court source said.
The couples, including two U.S. citizens and their Egyptian-born spouses, have been in jail for the duration of the trial. A third couple was believed to have fled the country to the United States and was tried in absentia.
The couples, all Christian, went on trial in May for child trafficking and forgery in a case that carried a maximum penalty of seven years and underscored the difficulty of adoptions in the predominantly Muslim country.
Suzan Haglouf, a U.S. citizen of Egyptian origin, and her Egyptian husband, Medhat Metyas, adopted a newborn from a Coptic Christian orphanage and were arrested last December when they applied for visas to the United States.
The U.S. embassy notified Egyptian authorities when the couple declined to provide a DNA sample to prove the child’s lineage. The couple later admitted to forging documents but said they did not but the child
Iris Botros, a 40-year-old Egyptian-American from North Carolina and her husband Louis Andros, 70, were accused of forging documents claiming that Botros gave birth to twins. But last year the couple allegedly adopted a baby in Egypt and paid $4,600 as donation to the orphanage.
Defense lawyer Naguib Guebrail told Al Arabiya when the trial began that the couples were merely trying to adopt the children and fell victim to the absence of adoption legislation in Egypt, where the constitution is based on sharia, or Islamic law.
"This is clearly a human rights case that affects Copts in Egypt," Guebrail told Al Arabiya. "Sharia does not allow for adoption but this cannot apply to Christians."