Cairo • Two Coptic Christian boys were arrested and detained by Egyptian authorities for insulting Islam after accusations they had torn up pages of the Quran.
Nabil Rizk, 10, and Mina Farag, nine, have been held in a juvenile detention facility in Upper Egypt since Tuesday pending further investigation, Ishak Ibrahim, head of religious freedom at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, said. A resident went to the police station accusing the boys of tearing up papers, included Koranic verses.
The boys have been detained, according to a faxed statement Wednesday from the Egyptian prosecutor in the town of Beni Suef.
A Coptic schoolteacher in Sohag was sentenced last month to six years in prison for posting cartoons deemed defamatory to Islam and the Prophet Muhammad on his Facebook account.