Bishoy Armia Boulous, formerly known as Mohammed Hegazy, an apostate from Islam in Egypt, remains imprisoned on charges of blasphemy related to his conversion to Christianity.
Imprisoned now for approximately a year, he has been held well past the legal six month investigation period. All this time, he has been subject to physical and verbal abuse, from both prison guards and fellow inmates on account of his “apostasy” from and “blasphemy” against Islam. He has been denied a Bible and has not had glasses since they were intentionally broken some time ago.
Bishoy was initially arrested in 2013 for “spreading false news.” But, according to his lawyer, Karam Ghobrial, the real reason his client is being held and tortured in prison has to do with what made Bishoy notorious in some years back in the first place: his audacity not only to convert to Christianity, but to try formally to change his religious identity from Muslim to Christian on his ID card—prompting much public animosity and death threats against him.