Egyptian security officers tied Said Mansour Rezk Abdelrazek to a wall in the shape of a cross, tried to strip the cross tattoo from his skin, and sent Muslim clerics to his cell to bring him back to Islam. He refused. Now the Egyptian state is asking a terrorism court for the maximum penalty, death or 25 years in prison, for a 30-year-old man whose crime, his lawyers say, is his refusal to renounce Jesus. His fiancée, Sophia, described his treatment in custody to The Jerusalem Post in a single sentence: “They had him crucified the whole time he was there.”
His lawyers announced in a statement following a hearing in his case that prosecutors are pursuing the maximum penalty, either execution or 25 years in prison. According to the NGO Coptic Solidarity, Abdelrazek faces charges of contempt for Islam, inciting public disorder, disseminating false information, and joining a banned terrorist organization that allegedly does not exist.
The office of Said Fayez, which represents him, alleged that he is charged with running an organization that does not exist and is being prosecuted because he refused to “renounce Jesus.” Sophia confirmed that Egyptian authorities have yet to identify the alleged terrorist organization. The lawyers’ statement was posted on Abdelrazek’s X account under the name he is also known by, Said Abu Mustafa. The court adjourned the case until December 8, 2026, when the defense will present its arguments.
Abdelrazek was referred to trial before the Terrorism Circuit of the First Criminal Court in Badr after nine months of pretrial detention, and he is held in the 10th of Ramadan prison amid growing concerns over his health. His lawyers allege torture and medical negligence at the prison, saying he has been held in a crucifixion position and denied medical care despite having a heart stent. Sophia reported severe pain in his lower back and urinary tract with no diagnosed cause, and when the defense requested an urgent medical examination in April, the court refused.
The US Commission on International Religious Freedom has designated Abdelrazek a religious prisoner of conscience, finding that “authorities and inmates physically and psychologically abused Abdelrazek for his conversion.” Amnesty International has issued an Urgent Action on his behalf. His defense team includes the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, and the office of Cassation lawyer Saeed Fayez. International human rights groups have long criticized the Badr courts for secrecy, lack of due process, prolonged pretrial detention, and limited access to lawyers.
The prison has denied him the most basic acts of faith. He asked permission to attend a Coptic Orthodox Christmas Mass on January 7, and prison authorities refused. After a January 13 visit, his lawyer reported that Abdelrazek was in good spirits and fully understood the possible outcomes of his case. He asked to be allowed to worship in prison, to have a Bible, and to receive communion.
Born into a Muslim family, Abdelrazek first encountered Christianity when he noticed an open Bible in a neighbor’s shop. He reacted angrily to what he read, then kept thinking about it and returned days later to speak with a part-time minister. He went on to study the Bible at a Protestant Baptist church and was baptized around 2017. He became a Christian in 2016 and later joined the Russian Orthodox Church in Egypt. Sophia said that, raised in an observant Muslim home, he had never felt safe asking questions about faith, and Christianity gave him the freedom to question and seek answers.
The first person to turn him in was his own mother. Sophia said his mother reported him to the security services after he announced his conversion, and she took away his then-wife and son out of fear he would lead them to Christianity. Under Islamic law, his wife was required to divorce him, and he lost custody of his child.
Legal, social and civil difficulties after his conversion drove him to flee to Russia in 2019, where he sought asylum on religious grounds. In 2023, Russian authorities arrested him over a privately filmed video considered offensive to Islam. In 2024, Russia deported him to Egypt even though he held documentation from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees confirming he qualified for international protection, a move rights advocates said violated non-refoulement, the principle that protects refugees from forced return to a country where they face persecution.
On his arrival, Egyptian authorities held him incommunicado for about ten days. He later said he was coerced into the painful removal of a Christian tattoo and suspended for hours at a time in a crucifixion position. Interrogators pressed him to recant, monitor other converts, and delete his social media accounts, then released him with orders not to speak publicly or proselytize. Sophia said interrogators believed wealthy organizations were working to baptize Egypt’s Muslims, and they wanted him to inform on priests and converts and use his social media to attack Christianity.
Released into his family’s custody on condition that he return to Islam, he refused and was ordered to attend classes on Islam. At home, he was pressured to perform the five daily Islamic prayers, and his brother-in-law threw pots of water over his face to wake him for prayers at around 5 a.m. Sophia said the couple both posted regularly about Christianity online and built sizeable followings. On July 15, 2025, police arrested him in Cairo without a warrant after he asked a lawyer to help him obtain identity documents recognizing his change of religion. The arrest blocked the couple’s planned wedding at the Australian Embassy.
The trial opened on April 21 with a procedural hearing. In June, the court adjourned without hearing the scheduled prosecution witnesses or the forensic expert, even with the defense and human rights monitors in the courtroom. On September 6, the court finally heard prosecution witnesses and allowed the defense to cross-examine them.
var images = [],
index = 0;
images[0] = ““;
images[1] = ““;
images[2] = ““;
images[3] = ““;
index = Math.floor(Math.random() * images.length);
document.write(images[index]);
//done
His lawyer, Saeid Fayaz, told Christian Solidarity Worldwide that thousands of Christian converts in Egypt have no rights and live in isolation and constant fear, and that his client trusted the constitution’s guarantee of religious freedom, “not realising that it is a one-way freedom.”
Egypt’s constitution makes a promise its courts refuse to keep. Article 64 states that “freedom of belief is absolute,” yet in practice that right is denied to those who leave Islam. The same constitution, in Article 2, declares the principles of Islamic Sharia the principal source of Egyptian legislation, and Sharia leaves no room for a Muslim to walk away.
Islamic law calls leaving the faith ridda, apostasy, a category reserved for Muslims, and it makes no difference whether the apostate converts to another religion or simply abandons Islam. The punishment comes from the hadith, the recorded sayings attributed to Muhammad that carry legal authority in Islam. Sahih al-Bukhari, the most authoritative hadith collection in Sunni Islam, records the command: “Whoever changes his religion, kill him” (Bukhari 6922).
A second hadith, recorded in both Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, permits shedding a Muslim’s blood in three cases, among them “one who abandons his religion and separates from the community.” On that basis, all four classical Sunni schools of law prescribe death for an adult male apostate, traditionally after three days in which he is pressed to repent. The Hanafi school, which shaped Egyptian personal-status law, imprisons a female apostate until she returns to Islam. Under Sharia, an apostate’s marriage is dissolved, he loses custody of his children, and he forfeits his inheritance.
Egypt’s highest religious authority stands behind the death penalty. In 2016, Al-Azhar’s Grand Imam Ahmed el-Tayyib declared on Egyptian television that “The penalty for an open apostate, departing from the community, is well stipulated in Sharia,” treating conversion away from Islam as treason.
