Egypt: report from Compass Direct (text here, link to changing page).
The last of 22 Egyptian Christians arrested since mid October and held for torture and interrogation by security police was ordered released last week in Cairo. On December 3, Mariam Girguis Makar, 30, was granted bail by an Egyptian court and ordered released from El-Kanater Women’s Prison, 45 days after she was arrested from her home. But as of noon today, she still had not been set free, sources in Cairo confirmed. “She will definitely be released, they say, but the release procedures still are not finished,” the source said. Makar and her fellow suspects, more than half of them women, were accused of falsifying Christian identity papers for themselves and other former Muslims. According to defense lawyers, criminal charges have not been filed against Makar or her husband Yousef Samuel Makari Suliman. Married with two young daughters, Makar and her husband converted to Christianity while living in Cairo and moved to Alexandria in 1999 in an attempt to begin a new life.