A criminal court in Egypt has sentenced a family of eight in Beni-Suef to 15 years in prison for converting to Christianity and changing their place of residence. The court also sentenced seven employees in the local authority of Beni-Suef's city of Beba to five years in prison.

The court, headed by Judge Ashraf abdel-Naby Shahin and Judge Tamer abdel-Rahman, sentenced Nadia Mohamed Ali and her children Mohab, Maged, Sherif, Amira, Amir, and Nancy Ahmed Mohamed abdel-Wahab to 15 years in prison.

They also sentenced Nabil Adly Hana, Ayad Naguib Ayad, Hany Bebawy Reyad, Amgad Awad Bebawy, Shehata Wahba Ghobrial, Mohamed Oweis abdel-Gawad, and Mohamed abdel-Fatah el-Berawy to five years in prison.

The case dates from 2004 to 2006, when Nadia Mohamed Ali and her sons cooperated with seven employees to change their names on their identification cards to Christian names, in addition to changing their place of residence to Beni-Suef.

They extracted administrative documents with their new names that paved the way to create new identification cards.

Previous investigations conducted by the Public Prosecution clarified that Nadia Mohamed Ali was a Christian when she converted to Islam 23 years ago. She married a mechanic named Mohamed abdel-Wahab Mustafa who died in 1991. She planned to return to Christianity with her children to obtain her dues.

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The court said that the violation was proven when her son extracted a birth certificate replacing his name with Malak Bishoy abdel-Massih. He was arrested in the headquarters of the Information Center. He acknowledged during the investigations in front of the public prosecution that his mother asked to change his religion.