CAIRO, 17 December 2006 — An Egyptian court denied Bahais yesterday the right to state their religion on official documents and described them as pro-Israeli apostates. The Supreme Administrative Court ruled against the right of Hossam Ezzat Mussa and his wife, Rania Enayat, to state their religion on official documents.

Judge Sayed Nofal, speaking after reading out the verdict, said “the constitution promotes freedom of belief for the three recognized heavenly religions and they are Islam, Christianity and Judaism.

“As for the Bahais, Islamic jurists have all agreed that the Bahai faith is not one of the three recognized religions,” he said. “Those who belong to this religion are apostates of Islam, because the faith’s principles contradict the Islamic religion and all other religions.” The couple had filed the case in 2004. In April this year a lower court ruled in their favor.

Meanwhile, Egyptian prosecutors have ordered that 140 members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, including deputy leader Khairat El-Shatir, stay in detention for 15 days for questioning, judicial sources said yesterday.

Police rounded up the Islamists on Thursday morning in a crackdown connected with student activism at Al-Azhar University and a protest march in which several dozen Islamist students wore black militia-style uniforms and black balaclavas.

The prosecutors will investigate the possibility that the Brotherhood members had offensive weapons, took part in a public show of strength and possessed Muslim Brotherhood leaflets and documents, the sources said. In their appearance before a state security prosecutor yesterday, the students chose to wear white clothing of the kind worn by detainees in preventive detention, as if to say that their detention was a forgone conclusion. Prosecutors showed the students confiscated military-style clothing, but the students refused to speak and their lawyers walked out in protest.

—Additional input from Reuters