(Compass) – Thirteen months after Egypt jailed and tortured a Coptic Christian pharmacist for marrying a former Muslim woman, Boulos Farid Rezek-Allah Awad was finally allowed to emigrate from Egypt to Canada in March. A few weeks earlier, his wife Enas Yehya Abdel Aziz had escaped the country to claim refugee status abroad. Egyptian security police officials told Rezek-Allah last November that he was permanently blacklisted from leaving Egypt ; they vowed to track down and punish his wife for her “illegal” marriage to a Christian. During his two subsequent attempts to leave for Canada , he was turned back by Egyptian authorities. Rezek-Allah told Compass that he assumed that the Egyptian authorities somehow learned that his wife had managed to slip out of Egypt without being identified and arrested. “So after they lost hope of catching Enas, they allowed me to depart from Egypt ,” he said. His wife plans to enter English language classes and he is studying for his final pharmacy-license exams in Canada this coming August.