Egypt: Interesting Report in Media on Supreme Court Session

Today, Egypt's Rose el-Yousef newspaper published an interesting brief report on the Supreme Administrative Court's session which was held yesterday in Cairo to hear the government's appeal of the Baha'i case, and reported in this previous post.

The article is entitled, "Angry [mob] Surrounds American Embassy's Emissary in the [court] Session Examining the Baha'i Case."

The article reports the following:

"A large number of those present in the Supreme Administrative Court yesterday resented the presence of a delegate from the American Embassy's Office of Economic and Political Affairs during the court hearing of the Baha'i case. The large number of an angered [mob] surrounding him [the representative] asked for the secret [reason] behind his presence. He announced that he came [to the session] because he was officially commissioned by the Embassy to do so."

"On the other hand, the court's appeals circuit decided to postpone the case until next [this] December [2006]. An Administrative Court had decided to grant a Baha'i litigator [his right] to enter the word Baha'i in the religion section of the Identification Card. The Ministry of Interior has appealed the decision to the [Supreme] Court which suspended the implementation of the [lower court's] expedited ruling eight months ago, and decided to refer the case to the first plenary circuit to examine the merits of the case."

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom had published a report for "Immediate Release" on 16 November 2006, entitled "Egypt: USCIRF Calls for New Policy on National Identity Cards." To read this report published in a previous post, please click here.