ICC NOTE: 4 Coptic Christian teenagers were sentenced by an Egyptian court for insulting Islam in a short video which came to light in April of 2015. Three teenagers will join their teacher, who is also Christian, in a three to five year sentence for absentia. The fourth teenagers was referred to a juvenile facility. All four teenagers should have been referred to a juvenile facility instead they will be placed in with the regular prison population for merely laughing in a video making fun of ISIS. It is just another prime example of religious intolerance and persecution by the Muslim majority in Egypt. El-Sissi who took control of the government after ousting Muhammad Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood has called for religious reform yet there has been little to show for it. 

2/26/2016 Egypt (ABC News) – An Egyptian court convicted four Coptic Christian teenagers for contempt of Islam on Thursday, after they appeared in a video mocking Muslim prayers, sentencing three to five years in prison and referring a fourth to a juvenile detention facility, one

The harsh ruling — which has followed a surge of blasphemy cases in Egyptian courts — underscores what rights groups describe as a culture of intolerance within the country’s judicial system at a time when the Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi is seeking to position himself as an advocate for religious reform.

The 30-second video showed the students pretending to pray, with one kneeling on the floor while reciting Qur’anic verses and two others standing behind him and laughing. One waved his hand under a second’s neck in a sign of beheading. The video was filmed during a students’ picnic to mock Islamic State group it beheaded Coptic Christians in Libya last year.

It was filmed on a mobile phone by the students’ teacher, who is also a Christian, and who was sentenced to three years in prison for insulting Islam in a separate trial.

The teenagers’ lawyer Maher Naguib said his clients, who are high school students in the southern province of Minya, were tried in absentia. They were all minors, he said, adding that the court exempted only one, named Clinton Magdy, and referred him to the juvenile facility.

Some ten security trucks surrounded the court building in the southern city of Bani Mazar. The families of the students cried, and some women wailed in disbelief and collapsed on hearing the verdict.

Naguib described the ruling as “unbelievable” and said the judge should have just punished the teenagers with a fine.

Iman Girgis, a mother of one of the convicted students, 16-year-old Moller Atef, told The Associated Press, “my son was sentenced to five years for laughing. Is that possible?”

“What kind of justice is this?” she added.

Naguib said the video came to light in April 2015, shortly after Islamic State militants in Libya beheaded dozens of Egyptian Christians. The video prompted calls by angry Muslims to evict the students and the teacher from their village. Mobs attacked the students’ houses in the village and security forces arrested the students while the teacher and his family were ordered to leave the village after a meeting of the village elders.

Christians make up approximately 10 percent of Egypt’s population. They have long complained of discrimination by the Muslim majority. Christians were among the main supporters of the army chief-turned-president, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who led the military ouster of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi amid mass protests against Morsi’s rule.

“I voted for el-Sissi against Islamists,” Girgis said, “is this the price?”

El-Sissi has vowed to purge extremism from Egypt’s religious discourse, yet Egypt has witnessed a spike in blasphemy charges even after the ouster of Morsi, who hails from the country’s largest Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood. Rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, have called on Egyptian authorities to end prosecutions based on contempt of religion laws.

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