Egypt population "major challenge": Mubarak

Egypt's population could more than double to 160 million by 2050, hindering social and economic development unless something is done about the "urgent" problem, President Hosni Mubarak warned on Monday.

Mubarak, who has in the past blamed population growth for draining state resources amid rising discontent at rocketing food prices, said that rampant reproduction was a "major challenge" and "fundamental obstacle" to development.If nothing is done, Egypt's population of 78 million will almost double to 160 million by 2050, Mubarak said at the opening of a population conference.

But if measures are taken to slow population growth, the population will reach 100 million in 2025 and 120 million by 2050, he quoted experts as saying.

Population growth is "a major challenge for this generation and the generations to come," Mubarak said on Egyptian state television, and a "key obstacle to our efforts for development and improving the standard of living.

"A baby is born in Egypt, the Arab world's most populous nation, on average every 23 seconds. The population has more than doubled in 30 years and today around a third of Egyptians are under 15.

Despite having an official growth rate of seven percent, Egypt suffers from rampant unemployment and 40 percent of the population lives on or around the poverty line of two dollars a day.Rising inflation means that the cost of living for the average household has risen by 50 percent in 2008, according to the U.N.'s World Food Program.

Sporadic protests have taken place in recent months against the high cost of living and reductions in subsidies on such staples as bread.

Mubarak mentioned improving the status of women and reducing illiteracy as key to reducing the population growth rate.

As in previous speeches, he stopped short of calling for birth control measures in the highly religious nation, largely Muslim but with a significant Coptic Christian minority.

Mubarak has in the past called on religious leaders and government ministries to "educate people about the problem."

Egypt's parliament outlaws female circumcision

Egypt's parliament outlawed female circumcision except in cases of "medical necessity" on Saturday, a condition which could undermine the ban, parliamentary sources said.
The new legislation is part of a bill on children's rights which has been the subject of fierce parliamentary debate for several weeks.
The parliamentary sources added that female genital mutilation, dates back to Pharaonic times in Egypt, and will now be punishable by a jail term of between three months and two years or a fine of 1,000-5,000 Egyptian pounds (190-940 dollars).
Circumcision involves the partial or complete removal of the woman's external genitals and has remained widespread in Egypt despite the efforts by political and religious authorities to stop the practice.
The health ministry tried in 1997 to ban the tradition, which affects both Muslim and Christian women in Egypt, and introduced curbs which allowed only doctors to carry out the operation and solely in "exceptional circumstances."The restrictions were further strengthened in June 2007 when Health Minister Hatem al-Gabali issued a decree
-- rather than law
-- banning all doctors and members of the medical profession from performing the procedure.The new law, which takes immediate effect, toughens penalties for anyone who is convicted of flouting the ban.Those who supported the practice argued it was appropriate when female genitals protruded too much, adding that it was needed to preserve the woman's virtue."Nothing in Islam forbids circumcision," said Saad al-Katatni, president of Egypt's main opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood.Female circumcision can cause death through hemorrhaging and later complications during childbirth. It also carries risks of infection, urinary tract problems and mental trauma.

Egypt's emergency law leaves trail of tears

About 18,000 Egyptians detained without charge
Fifteen years after police took away her husband, Zeinab Ahmed says she has lost hope he will return to help raise their daughter, born while he was in jail.
Mohamed el-Leithi stood trial in a military court with dozens of Islamists charged with belonging to the radical group Vanguards of Conquest.
He was acquitted but remains in jail under an emergency law that allows police to hold suspects for long periods without charge.

"Where is justice?" said Ahmed, wearing a black veil that only showed eyes welling with tears. "Drug dealers get out of jail. Murderers get out of jail. What has he done?"

About 18,000 Egyptians are detained without charge under the emergency law, in force since Islamist militants assassinated President Anwar Sadat in 1981, Amnesty International says. The prospect for their early release diminished this week when parliament extended the law for two years.
Local and international human rights groups accuse the ruling establishment of using it to crush dissent.
Ahmed and others with family members in detention share tales of months spent trying to find out where their relatives are detained, fruitless court release orders, financial hardship and traumatized children visiting their fathers behind bars.
During eight years when Leithi was in a prison about 450 km (300 miles) south of Cairo, Ahmed said she visited him only a handful of times a year because she could not afford to travel.
"I don't have money. My father was supporting me financially. He died.
Now my brothers support me," she said. Both Leithi's parents died when he was in jail. Mohamed Abdel-Moneim said it took him six years to find out the whereabouts of his son Amr, who has also been in jail since 1993... "
Tired? I have been running around for 15 years ... filing lawsuits," the 67-year-old retired civil servant said, choking back tears.
Torture
The government says it uses the law, which also allows authorities to send civilians for military trial, only to target terrorism suspects and drug dealers.
"If you knew the number of sabotage crimes that have been thwarted ... you would have said: 'Thank God the emergency law exists'," Moufid Shehab, a state minister, said this week. Analysts and human rights groups note 27 years of emergency law failed to stop militant attacks such as the bombings that rocked Sinai between 2004 and 2006, killing scores of Egyptians and foreign tourists.
They say the law has contributed to the rising influence of the police in public life and to what they say is systematic torture inside prisons and police stations. The interior ministry says it does not condone such practices and prosecutes officers who torture suspects."The government cannot live without a state of emergency," said Mohamed Zarea, director of the Arab Penal Reform Organisation, which offers free legal aid to detainees.Zarea was a detainee himself.
In 1988, he was kept in custody for 75 days for suspected links with an armed leftist group.
He says he was subjected to "all kinds of torture".
"It was torture that makes you wish you could die," he told Reuters, sitting behind a desk at his office in downtown Cairo.
"All kinds of torture, from beating to electric shocks to sleep deprivation, to being questioned while people next to you are beaten up ... to threats of sexual assault. All kinds." Zarea won a lawsuit against the government granting him 10,000 Egyptian pounds ($1,900) in compensation for his detention.
He used the money to set up his human rights group.

How the Internet is challenging Egypt's government

Although the general strikes of April 6 and May 4 drew limited public participation, they have revealed an important new political phenomenon in Egypt: political mobilization by young, second-generation internet users via blogs, YouTube, and Facebook.
After two years of intensive government efforts to outmaneuver the opposition, this mobilization caught the regime flat-footed. It highlighted the possible role of interactive non-traditional media in bringing about political change in Egypt, just as the government's heavy-handed response to the strikes revealed its failure to find new forms of political control aside from the usual repression by the security apparatus.The growing role of non-traditional media has pushed the state to try to curb them through various mechanisms.
Several bloggers have been arrested, including Moneim Mahmoud (editor of the Ana Ikhwan or "I am Brotherhood" blog).
Isra Abdel Fattah, who started a Facebook group calling for Egyptians to join the April 6 strike (over 74,000 joined), was also arrested and held for 16 days. The blogger Wael Abbas (editor of the Al-Wai al-Misri, or "Egyptian Awareness" blog) has been vilified in the government media due to his success in documenting Egyptian police brutality inside detention centers in video clips he posted on YouTube. And in February 2007, blogger Karim Amer was sentenced to four years in prison in 2007 for criticizing President Hosni Mubarak and religious institutions.

In the past few years, bloggers and other internet users have played several different roles in Egyptian politics.
First, internet users have voiced direct criticism of Mubarak's regime. For example, bloggers went beyond criticizing the amended Article 76 of the Constitution, which regulates the process for presidential elections, and mobilized to record the flagrant abuses that tarnished the popular referendum on the amendment in May 2005, notably the sexual harassment of female journalists.
The bloggers also stood in solidarity with the reformist judges who were subject to systematic attacks by circles close to the regime.
Bloggers have played a crucial role in uncovering abuses by institutions loyal to the regime.
The spread of mobile-phone video technology enabled bloggers to reveal incidents of torture in a number of detention centers, incidents that later became legal cases before the courts.
Such efforts built bridges between bloggers and domestic human rights groups; some blogs now systematically map detention facilities in which officers commonly physically abuse detainees. The political opposition has used bloggers' documentation to attack the regime for its use of torture not only as a means of suppressing political opposition but also in controlling political and social mobility.
Another area of blogger activism is the state of religious minorities, an extremely sensitive issue in Egypt. During the last three years, some blogs have specialized in transmitting the views of religious minorities in Egypt, as well as forms of discrimination practiced against them. Perhaps the most prominent examples are the blogs founded by members of the Bahai religion.
Blogs such as Bahai Misri (Egyptian Bahai) and Min Wijhat Nazar Ukhra (From Another Perspective) have become not only sources of information on the Bahai sect and their situation in Egypt, but also a way to mobilize support for their demands.
There are also blogs that document religious discrimination against Christians, expressing criticism that differs radically from the conciliatory political discourse of the Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Church. Here, the blog Aqbat Bila Hudud (Copts without Borders), edited by Hala Butrus, has given voice to those who see discrimination against Christians as being rooted not only in society but in the state and question the regime's official discourse about "national unity." Yet another area that bloggers are probing is the battle over strategies for various political players.
Some recent examples include blogs by members of the Muslim Brotherhood and their debates over the draft party platform put forward by the Guidance Bureau in 2007.
In the past, Brotherhood blogs served mainly to express the movement's political ideas and recruit new members, for example students. In discussing the platform, however, the blogs expressed and crystallized the struggle between the reformists (such as Ana Ikhwan) and the conservatives.
Most Brotherhood blogs joined the reformist side of the debate, rejecting ideas such as supervision of the executive and legislative branches by a board of religious scholars or exclusion of women and Copts from the presidency.
Brotherhood bloggers are also credited with bringing disagreements over the platform out from behind closed doors - as they are now doing with many political topics that were once taboo in Egypt.

Egypt extends state of emergency by two years

Egypt on Monday extended a controversial decades-old state of emergency by two years despite pledges to replace it by new legislation, in a move slammed by rights groups as anti-constitutional.

Parliament passed the law after a brief debate following a decision by President Hosni Mubarak to extend the state of emergency from June 1, a parliamentary official said.

The state of emergency was imposed in 1981 after the assassination by Islamists of President Anwar Sadat and has been repeatedly renewed since then despite protests from rights groups and regime opponents.
Last year Judicial and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Mufid Shehab said the state of emergency would end in 2008, even if the new anti-terror law meant to replace it was not ready.

"The state of emergency has for decades been one of the main causes of human rights violations in Egypt," Hafez Abu Sada of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR) told AFP.

Egypt's authorities have used the state of emergency to clamp down on political opponents, including the country's largest opposition movement, the banned Muslim Brotherhood, whose members sit in parliament as independents.

"We reject the extension of the state of emergency because there is no constitutional justification," Brotherhood political bureau member Essam al-Aryan told AFP.He said the Brotherhood would now start a public awareness campaign about the law.

On Tuesday the state-backed National Council of Human Rights said there was no longer any basis for renewing the state of emergency. Earlier this month two dozen independent human rights groups also called for the emergency to end, saying it "flies in the face of the comprehensive social, economic and political reforms under way in Egypt."

Press reactions
Political analyst Diaa Rashwan wrote in the independent daily Al-Masry al-Youm on Monday that "10 anti-terrorist laws could have been drafted in the time since Mubarak said he would lift the state of emergency.

" He called the extension a "crime," while the state-owned Al-Goumhuriya daily stressed the need for stringent security measures after thousands of Gazans forced their way across the frontier into Egypt in January to buy goods.

"Remember what happened when the Palestinians violated our borders... arriving with explosive belts around their waists and with grenades and bullets in their pockets," said an editorial."Was the state supposed to wait for a magistrate's warrant before arresting them?"

Coincide Hosting the Largest Communication Conference in Africa, an opposition's Web Site is being Blocked

Egyptian Government should Unblock Kefaya Homepage

Cairo on 12th May, 2008 The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information said today, that the website of the Egyptian Movement for Change:Kefaya “http://harakamasria.org/” was blocked in Egypt and the Internet users who have access to Internet through the T-Data Company,
the largest Internet Service Providers in Egypt, which is controlled by the Egyptian Government since 4th May. Many of Kefaya website visitors were surprised of their disability to browse the site during the call on for the past 4th of May Strike,
whether through T-Data or “Link” company, while Link has pulled back blocking the site later, but T-Data that belongs to the Egyptian Government continued blocking the site until today, leaving the internet users unable to get access to it, to be a cheek irony, that the time when the website of the most important political movement in Egypt is blocked coincides with the hosting the largest telecommunication conference in Africa- Africa Telecoms Conference.
Some of the ANHRI's technicians made an attempts to browse blocked website using different computers machines, and from different locations but all their attempts went in vain, while using the free internet dial up connections of T-Data and Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL).

What indicates clearly the Egyptian government return to its practice in blocking the internet site, which it has abandoned earlier.Said Samir Gad the editor-in-chief of Kefaya Website “ the website is performing normally with other ISP companies, but the technical supervisor of the website informed us that the T-Data Co. blocked Kefaya website through the IP Address.

Mohamed Ragab- Director to the Technical Unit- Arab Network for Human Rights Information stated: “ Blocking Kefaya Website decision from the T-Data ISP clients is a ridiculous decision, which is not any more practiced but by the most dictator governments in the world, the internet users will use the proxy so as to overcome this block, or simply transfer their accounts to other companies, the only loser of this decision is the T-Data and the Egyptian government that non of its officials will dare to declare that Egypt is supporting the Freedom to use the Internet.

”The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information condemns very much the decision to block Kefaya web site, calling on the government to work on correcting this wrongdoing, through unblocking Kefaya website and stop harassing the Internet activists in Egypt. http://www.hrinfo.net/en/reports/2008/pr0512.shtml

Authorities Use Intimidation, Violence to Suppress Online Advocacy

Egyptian authorities should immediately investigate and prosecute those security officials responsible for beating Ahmed Maher Ibrahim, Human Rights Watch said today.
Maher, a 27-year-old civil engineer, used the social-networking site Facebook to support calls for a general strike on May 4, 2008, President Hosni Mubarak's 80th birthday. Maher told Human Rights Watch that officers from the Interior Ministry's State Security Investigations (SSI) department apprehended him on a street in the suburb of New Cairo on May 7, blindfolded him and took him to a police station where they stripped him naked, and beat him intermittently for 12 hours before releasing him without charge.
"This is the work of thugs, pure and simple," said Joe Stork, Middle East deputy director at Human Rights Watch. "The government must show that those responsible for upholding the law are also subject to the law." Before the incident, Maher said, an SSI officer phoned him on April 25 to invite him "for a coffee" on the following day at SSI headquarters in Lazoghli, in downtown Cairo. Maher did not show up.
Over the course of the following week, Maher spoke with international news media about the strike. He told the BBC that several SSI officers had contacted him, but that he was undeterred.

"If we allow ourselves to fear them, we won't do anything," he told the BBC. "Then I would consider myself a partner in the crimes taking place in Egypt." On May 4, it appeared that few Egyptians had heeded the call for a strike. On May 7, however, as Maher was driving in New Cairo at around 1 p.m., an unmarked van with non-official license plates pulled in front of him.

Three other unmarked cars, also with non-official plates, surrounded the car and some 12 men in civilian clothes pulled him into the van, where they handcuffed and blindfolded him.
Maher told Human Rights Watch that the men took him first to the New Cairo police station.
There, he was beaten and insulted by men he could not identify because he was blindfolded.
Maher said that around the time of the afternoon prayers (4:30 p.m.), his captors took him to SSI headquarters at Lazoghli. There, they stripped him down to his underwear, threatened to rape him with a stick, and continued kicking, beating, and insulting him, and dragging him across the floor.
The blows fell mostly on his back and his neck, he said, and he lost some hearing after a sharp blow to one ear. Maher said his assailants wore gloves and applied lotion to his back between beatings in an apparent attempt to reduce bruising.
According to Maher, the officers did not accuse him of anything, but asked for the password of the May 4 Facebook group that news reports said he had started.
They also asked him about members of the group he had never met.
The SSI officers released him before dawn on May 8 with the warning that he would be beaten more severely the next time State Security detained him. The evening after his release, May 8, Maher went to a private hospital for a medical examination, including a CAT scan, the results of which were not available as of this writing. "Sadly, Maher's treatment is part of a pattern of abuse and extralegal intimidation by state officials," Stork said. "Egypt needs to put an end to the lawlessness of its law-enforcement officers." In another incident a month earlier, Isra'a `Abd al-Fattah, 29, was among roughly 500 people arrested by police nationwide in connection with a call for a strike on April 6.
(Most of those arrested were from the industrial Nile Delta city of Mahalla al-Kobra, where demonstrations against rising prices turned violent.) `Abd al-Fattah had also used a social network group on Facebook to publicize the April 6 strike, leading to her detention for more than two weeks.
Prosecutors had ordered her release a few days after she was arrested when charges against her of "inciting unrest" were dismissed, but interior ministry officials kept her in detention until April 23.
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Egypt ratified in 1982, holds that "no one shall be deprived of his liberty except on such grounds and in accordance with such procedure as are established by law," and that "no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

Egypt raises prices amid public anger

Egypt's parliament on Monday voted in favor of a set of tax and duty increases including on fuel, diesel and cigarettes amid public anger at price hikes and the state of the economy.

Tax breaks will be removed from private schools and educational institutions, while vehicle license fees will also see a sharp rise especially for large capacity engines.Around 120 opposition and independent MPs, including those representing the Muslim Brotherhood, voted against the proposal.
Parliament spent Monday discussing the proposal which is aimed at covering the 12.5-billion pound (2.3-billion dollar) cost of a rise in public sector salaries promised by President Hosni Mubarak.

Mubarak vowed last Wednesday to raise public sector salaries by 30 percent to combat rises in food prices.Speaking to parliament, Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif said the new measures were aimed at "taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor."In recent months, Egypt has seen a number of strikes and demonstrations against low salaries and price rises.

Egypt is also in the grip of a serious bread crisis brought on by a combination of the rising cost of wheat on world markets and sky-rocketing inflation.

A day of nationwide action called for April 6 saw riots erupt in the Nile Delta industrial city of Mahalla in which three people were killed after demonstrators pulled down posters of Mubarak.

Meanwhile an Egyptian television agency boss was charged by a Cairo court over helping to broadcast images of protesters tearing down portraits of President Hosni Mubarak during deadly food riots in April.Nader Gohar, who owns the Cairo News Company, was charged with not having a license to provide satellite feed facilities to foreign channels following a complaint by the Egyptian Radio and Television Union, a judicial official told AFP. Gohar, who is currently in Paris, said Monday he has been falsely accused of the broadcasting breach, which carries a maximum penalty of five years' imprisonment.

Three civilians were killed by police during two days of rioting in the Nile Delta industrial city of Mahalla on April 6-7. Demonstrations called to protest rising food prices turned violent when police used rubber-coated bullets and tear-gas on protesters who tore down billboard images of Mubarak.

Footage of the posters being torn down

-- a crime against the president under Egyptian law

-- and the subsequent violence could be seen on many television stations and on the Internet. The court, which ordered Gohar's arrest ahead of the next hearing on May 26, has already ordered the agency's offices searched and impounded five satellite dishes used for broadcasting and a vehicle.

Egypt jails 25 Islamists for up to 10 years

An Egyptian military court on Tuesday jailed 25 members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood for up to 10 years for financing a banned organization and acquitted 15 others, a court official said.

The Brotherhoood's number three Khayrat al-Shater and fellow leader Hassan Malek were jailed for seven years while seven other Islamists were jailed in absentia for 10 years.Sixteen others were jailed for between 18 months and five years, the source said.

The Islamists were sentenced following a repeatedly delayed verdict that has no right of appeal because it is issued by a military tribunal.

Egypt police and protesters clash, strike foiled

Egyptian police clashed with protesters in the Nile Delta city of Mahalla on Sunday, firing tear gas and arresting at least 150 after plans for a strike at the city's textile factory were scrapped under pressure from security forces. Angry residents demanding an end to price hikes and soaring inflation set two schools ablaze and burnt tires along the city's railway.

Workers at the Misr Spinning and Weaving Company in Mahalla had planned a strike on Sunday to demand higher pay, but security pressure and internal divisions prevented it from taking place.Around the country, plans for a general strike -- inspired by the Mahalla action -- fizzled out after the government made good on its warning to take firm action against protesters by arresting dozens of people.

Among those detained were opposition leaders including Islamist journalist Mohammed Abdel Qudoos and Magdi Hussein who heads the suspended Labour party.

Bloggers and members of other opposition parties, including the Nasserist and the liberal Ghad parties as well as from the protest movement Kefaya, were also arrested.

Analysts said that even though a massive strike did not take place nationally, the call to strike was significant in itself.

"We must not underestimate the call. Even if it did not have a large effect, it's the first time such a call has been made," Mustafa Kamel al-Sayyed, a politics professor at the American University in Cairo, told AFP.

He said the move "reflects a general feeling of discontent in the country." It is unclear who initiated the call which snowballed after some 25,000 employees at the textile plant in Mahalla announced plans to strike from Sunday over low salaries and price hikes.

In Mahalla, the strike was called off after pressure from security forces and internal divisions, employees said.

A strike would have been considered illegal without the backing of unions which are linked mainly to the ruling National Democratic Party.

Sky-rocketing food prices in Egypt this year have been met in recent weeks by a rumbling wave of popular discontent and unprecedented strikes and demonstrations.

On Saturday the interior ministry threatened "immediate and firm measures against any attempt to demonstrate, disrupt road traffic or the running of public establishments and against all attempts to incite such acts.

" The interior ministry insisted that all public institutions, including schools and state-run factories, should open for business as usual.

And it accused "provocateurs and illegal movements" of having "spread false rumours and called for protests, demonstrations and a strike on Sunday.

" The state-owned daily Al-Ahram warned that those inciting or participating in the strike could go to jail. The UN's World Food Program said this month that the average household expenditure in Egypt had risen by 50 percent since January 1

Egypt university lecturers stage one-day strike

Thousands of Egyptian university lecturers held a nationwide strike on Sunday demanding salary increases and better pensions, the latest in a barrage of social unrest against the government.

"We didn't give any classes today and now we're staging a two-hour demonstration," said Hani al-Husseini, who heads the strike's coordination committee.

Fellow academic Mohamed Fouad Ali told AFP outside Cairo University, that lecturers currently get around 2,000 Egyptian pounds (365 dollars) a month, a figure they want to see doubled.
"If our demands are not met we will be forced to continue strike days, even if that's not what we want, especially during the exam period," said geology lecturer Ezzedine Abdel Hakim, alongside around 60 colleagues.

Hakim said that more than 100,000 lecturers were taking part in the strike at 25 universities around the country. Cairo University alone employs 12,000 lecturers, he said.Despite the strike, official media reported university life as unaffected by the industrial action.

The MENA news agency said that classes at Ain Shams and Helwan universities were continuing as usual, quoting staff as saying that they were happy with an unspecified salary increase promised by Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif.

Students did not express much solidarity for the lecturers."Some of us have traveled very far to be here and they're making us lose a day of classes, it's too much," said Cairo University student Basma Amin.

The country has been hit by a wave of strikes and demonstrations in recent months in the face of rampant inflation and sky-rocketing prices.

After demonstrations of bread in Egypt

If the Egyptian president knows the meaning of hungry ... he will certainlly knows how much the egyptian people suffer .

the smallest mam in the world ? only in egypt !!!

There are in Egypt more than 3 million children Street? What is the solution

this vedio shows the novel tells how a child was raped and shows us a child whose existence

the torture in egypt

Police officer prevent the detainee from going to the bathroom and says to him.... urinate on yourself??

Can you believe that? The Government of Egyptian described as one of the most active countries that innovate methods of torture!!

Welcome to a very civilized Egypt

Egypt appoints first female marriage officer !! is that true ?

An Egyptian court on Monday appointed a woman to perform and register marriages, the first such appointment in Egypt's history, state news agency MENA said. The court in the Nile Delta town of Zagazig granted Amal Selim, 32, the right to perform the duties of a ma'dhun in a town in Sharkia province, according to MENA.It said Selim had applied to the position four months ago, the only woman out of 11 applicants for the job.

According to MENA, Selim said she was sure she would get the job because of her faith in the Egyptian judiciary and because she was the only candidate with a master's degree.In April, Egypt appointed 30 women as judges, the largest such group to be appointed since 2003 when President Hosni Mubarak first named a woman judge.Several Arab countries already have women sitting as judges

Egypt allows re-conversion to Christianity on ID

In a landmark ruling, an Egyptian court on Saturday authorized 12 converts to Islam who then reverted to Christianity to have their original faith marked on their ID cards, judicial sources said.

They said the court allowed the Coptic plaintiffs to mark "Christian" on their compulsory identity cards, in place of the "Muslim" mention which was used after their conversion.But their IDs will have to specify that they had "adopted Islam for a brief period", the sources said.

The court of administrative justice ruled that the mention would "prevent any manipulation or concealment with judicial or social consequences" following the conversion to Islam.

"This is an historic decision, a victory for freedom of religion in Egypt and in keeping with Article 46 of the constitution which calls for freedom of religion," the plaintiff's lawyer Ramses al-Naggar told AFP.

The verdict was greeted with applause among the plaintiffs and their lawyers and other Coptic onlookers in the courtroom, many of whom cried out, "Long live justice.""This opens the door of hope to hundreds of Copts who converted ... and were then unable to return," said Mamdouh Nakhla, a human rights lawyer.

Nakhla said there were around 450 similar cases currently in litigation, and that estimates of the number of people who wished to revert to Christianity from Islam ranged to up to several thousand.

The court ruling, which cannot be appealed, overturned a lower court decision in April which said the state had no obligation to recognize a convert to Islam's decision to revert back to his original faith because it violated Islam's ban on apostasy.

The higher court's decision now obliges Egypt's ministry of interior to issue the plaintiffs with birth certificates and identity papers identifying them as Christians."I have won my identity back.

I am alive again," said Yasser Helmi, a 27-year-old man among the plaintiffs."I couldn't get an identity card and my life had ground to a halt."Helmi said his father had converted to Islam, without the knowledge of his wife and son who was a child at the time.

In Egypt, Copts who represent six to 10 percent of the 76-million population are known to convert to escape the strict rules of their church which bans divorce or marriage to a Muslim woman.

A lower court had previously refused to take up the case, which was opposed by the Egyptian government.

Saturday's ruling comes less than two weeks after a court for the first time granted members of Egypt's tiny Baha'i community the right to obtain government identity papers -- largely denied them for several years -- as long as they omit their faith, since it is not officially recognized in Egypt.

Without the official ID cards, Egyptians can not apply for jobs, buy property, open bank accounts or register their children in schools.

They are also subject to arrest for not carrying valid identity papers

Egypt charges policemen over balcony murder

Egyptian prosecutors on Saturday charged two policemen with murdering a man by throwing him off a balcony in Cairo, security sources said.A security source gave the policemen's names as Maher Hassan and Hassan Sobhi, and said prosecutors had accused them of killing Nasr Gadallah, 37 in August last year.Forensic examination of Gadallah confirmed he had died of the impact, but offered no opinion as to whether he was pushed or jumped, as the two policemen say.

Gadallah's case is one of a number of high profile cases of suspected police abuse that gained wide-spread attention after a video circulated on the Internet last year showing a man being sodomized with a stick in a Cairo police station.

Two policemen were later sentenced to three years in prison for torture in that case.

International and local rights groups say torture is systematic in Egyptian jails and police stations.

Past victims have reported receiving electric shocks and beatings.

The government says it opposes torture and prosecutes policemen when there is evidence.

Egypt jails cops for parading man in ladies wear

An Egyptian court has convicted and jailed three police officers for beating a prisoner in the port city of Alexandria and humiliating him by forcing him to wear women's clothing in public, judicial sources said on Saturday.The court convicted Yusri Ahmed Issa, an officer, of torture and of assaulting the prisoner's honor, and sentenced him to five years in jail. Two other lower-ranking policemen were sentenced to a year each.The sources said the police officers had forced Ibrahim Abbas, who was suspected of theft, to put on women's clothing and walk in the streets of Alexandria on Egypt's northern Mediterranean coast in April 2006. They also beat him with batons inside the police station, the sources said.

The court ruling came two months after a Cairo court sentenced two policemen to three years in prison for torturing a minibus driver by sodomizing him with a stick, in a case that sparked public outrage in Egypt and drew international criticism.Egypt has come under increasing public scrutiny in recent years over the treatment of detainees. Rights groups say the abuse can include electric shocks and beatings. They say most abuse cases never make it to court, and torture convictions resulting in jail time are relatively rare.Egypt says it opposes torture and prosecutes policemen against whom it has evidence that they tortured

Egypt soldiers found in mass grave near Israel

The bodies of 30 Egyptian soldiers believed killed in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War were found in a mass grave in the Sinai desert close to the Israeli border on Wednesday, a security source said.The uniformed bodies were exhumed near Sheikh Zuwayed between the Mediterranean coastal city of El-Arish and the Egypt-Gaza border town of Rafah after a Bedouin informed police of the discovery.Forensic experts must examine the remains to establish whether they were buried after being killed in combat or executed, the source said, adding that the bodies "probably" dated from the 1967 Six Day War.The Sinai Peninsula was the scene of fighting between Egypt and Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973. Egypt became the first Arab nation to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979.
Meanwhile, Egypt's parliamentary defense and national security committee is to meet next week to ask the government to investigate the recent discovery of bodies believed to be of Egyptian soldiers in the Israeli resort of Eilat.Egyptian media reported that the bodies found during construction work in Eilat, on the Red Sea next to Egypt, were also wearing uniforms and were found with pages of the Quran.Egypt asked the International Committee of the Red Cross in April to launch an inquiry into claims made in a documentary that Israeli troops executed Egyptian prisoners during the 1967 war.The documentary, screened on Israeli public television, said that 250 Egyptian PoWs were killed by Israel's Shaked commando near El-Arish during the conflict.The director of the film subsequently said he had mistakenly identified Palestinian fighters who were killed in combat as Egyptian prisoners

Six million Egyptians addicted to drugs: Survey

At least 8.5 percent of Egypt's population, amounting to six million people, are addicted to drugs, an official survey published on Wednesday showed.

A recent study published by Egypt's National Council for Fighting and Treating Addiction (NCFTA) reported the majority of drug users are aged between 15 and 25, NCFTA member Suheir Lutfi told the English-language Al-Ahram Weekly.

Bango, a type of marijuana found in the Middle East, is the drug of choice, but cocaine, heroin and chemical drugs like ecstasy and methamphetamine are also widely available on the local market, the study found.

About 439,000 children are regular drug users in Egypt, a major producer, supplier and consumer of narcotics. Of the 12.2 percent of Egypt's students dependent on drugs, nine percent smoke Bango, three percent prefer hashish and 0.21 percent take heroin or chemical drugs, NCFTA said.

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Egypt's location makes it a transit point for drug trafficking from major production areas in South East Asia and Europe.Bango is widely used in the Sinai Peninsula and has also been reported in southern Egypt, according to UNODC