Coptic children, Nabil and Mina were arrested for blasphemy after local Islamic authorities accused them of tearing apart some pages of Qur'an.
Nagy Rizk (Nabil Nagy Rizk's father)
Nabil Nagy Rzik and Mina Nady Farag are two Coptic Christian Egyptians who, at the ages of 10 and 9 respectively, were arrested for insults against religion.
The two boys, according to Nagy’s father, had been playing near some garbage in the street and apparently damaged pages from the Qur’an they found in a small bag. Although Nabil’s father claimed they were illiterate and did not understand what they were doing, they were nonetheless taken to a local mosque after the village imam discovered them. When his attempts to get a priest to punish the boys failed, he took legal action, having the support of three other citizens behind him.
"While they were playing in the rubbish, a man called Ibrahim Mohammed Ali went to look and saw a few pieces of papers with dirt on them and thought that the boys peed on it and tore the Koran, but they didn’t." - Nabil's father
In March 2012, the boys were convicted of the crime of blasphemy in court. They did not, however, face the punishment of fully-grown adults, and they were instead returned to their parents’ custody.
Two Coptic children arrested in Egypt for 'insulting Islam' - Ahram
Two Egyptian Christian Boys, 9 and 10, Accused Of Defamation Of Islam - Assyrian International News Agency
Egypt has a general blasphemy law that prohibits disparaging “the heavenly religions.” While the law ostensibly targets no religion in particular, in practice it is usually used against religious minorities and those who blaspheme Islam. Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority has particularly borne a disproportionate weight of blasphemy prosecutions. In addition to the relatively aggressive efforts of Egyptian authorities to prosecute such cases, blasphemers and atheists must also contend with social pressure, coercion, and the risk of vigilante violence.