He's lucky he wasn't sentenced to death for converting.
"Sir John Howard" <sirjohnhoward@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:97d04948-266e-49c3-b175-7eaa3e8a4984@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
pressure convert to return to Islam during ‘illegal’ five-day
detention.
ALGIERS, Algeria, May 9 (Compass Direct News) – An Algerian Christian
detained five days for carrying a Bible and personal Bible study books
was handed a 300-euro (US$460) fine and a one-year suspended prison
sentence last week, an Algerian church leader said.
Last Tuesday (April 29) a court in Djilfa, 150 miles south of Algiers,
charged the 33-year-old Muslim convert to Christianity with “printing,
storing and distributing” illegal religious material. A written copy
of the verdict has yet to be issued.
The Protestant, who requested anonymity for security reasons, told
fellow Christians in his home city of Tiaret that police pressured him
to return to Islam while in custody.
The conviction is the latest in a wave of detentions and court cases
against Algeria’s Protestants and Catholics. Since January police and
provincial officials have ordered the closure of up to half of the
country’s 50 estimated Protestant congregations.
Officials in several instances have cited a February 2006 law
governing the wor****p of non-Muslims. Clarified by subsequent decrees
in 2007, the law restricts most religious meetings to approved places
of wor****p and forbids any attempt to “shake the faith of a Muslim.”
On the morning of April 25, the Tiaret resident and eight-year convert
to Christianity was stopped at a police roadblock in the vicinity of
Djilfa while riding in a shared taxi. Officials took the convert into
custody upon finding a Bible and several religious study books in his
luggage.
A Christian from Tiaret told Compass that Djilfa police appeared to
have previous knowledge of the Protestant’s Christian connections.
Officers refused to let the convert call friends to let them know of
his detention, naming a church member in Tiaret whom they claimed he
would contact.
“We will call your family for you,” the officials said, according to
the Christian source from Tiaret.
According to one Algerian human rights lawyer, police violated the
convert’s rights by refusing him the telephone call.
“Any detained person has the right to call his family,” said the
lawyer, who requested anonymity.
A leader from the Protestant Church of Algeria, an umbrella
association for mainline and evangelical congregations, said that
Christians remained unaware of the detainee’s location for several
days.
Precarious Position
The Christian source in Tiaret said that Djilfa police verbally
attacked the convert because of his faith during his five-day
detention at city’s police station.
“They did not hit him, but they tried to convert him back to Islam,”
he said.
Under Algerian law, police can detain a suspect up to 48 hours before
bringing him before a state prosecutor, the human rights lawyer told
Compass.
“It is not legal for them to hold him for five days,” said the lawyer,
who clarified that any detention between 24 and 48 hours had to be
approved by a state prosecutor.
After five days in Djilfa’s main police station, the Christian was
brought before a state prosecutor and then a Djilfa judge. According
to the convert, the judge convicted him of “printing, storing and
distributing” illegal religious literature, though the charge remains
uncertain until a written verdict is issued.
Before releasing him, the judge told the convert he would be given a
300 euro fine and a one-year suspended sentence.
According to the Tiaret Christian, the convert received the “printing”
charge because he was traveling with a computer printer in his
possession. The convert has yet to receive a written copy of the
verdict, though observers said this was common in Algeria, as court
verdicts are normally sent by mail following a ruling.
Because the sentence is suspended, the convert will only have to do
jail time if convicted of another crime. But the Tiaret Christian said
that the verdict constituted an ongoing threat to the Christian.
“A policeman could bring false accusations against him, that he gave
one of them a Bible, and he would be thrown in jail,” the friend said.
Christians in Tiaret re****ted two separate instances in which
undercover police officers pretended to be interested in Christianity
and then detained Protestants for giving them Bibles.
Charges were thrown out for the first incident in March. In the second
case a Tiaret court handed a Christian a two-year suspended sentence
and a 100,000-dinar (US$1,540) fine on April 2. The written verdict
was delivered on April 9.
At least five Christians from Tiaret have been detained or tried for
Christian activities since January 2008.
According to unconfirmed re****ts, Tiaret police detained six more
Christians today.
Christians constitute a tiny minority of Algeria’s population of 33
million. Catholics count several thousand congregants, mostly
expatriates, while numbers for Protestants are less certain.
Conservative estimates place the number of Protestants at 10,000,
though evangelism via satellite TV has re****tedly led to a large
number of isolated conversions unaccounted for in church attendance
figures.
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