By Coptic Solidarity –
On 18 November 2025, the Appeals Court of Damanhour reduced the sentence imposed on Sabry Kamel from life imprisonment to ten years’ hard labor, citing his advanced age—nearly eighty—and severe health conditions, including a recent open-heart surgery. Despite this partial mitigation, the Court fully upheld the conviction, doing so in the continued absence of forensic evidence, in the face of contradictory testimonies, and without addressing the procedural violations that marred the original trial.
The Appeals Court’s decision unfolded under the unmistakable scrutiny of what local observers describe as the “Islamic street,” whose agitation had already shaped the environment surrounding the first-degree trial. In such a climate, a full acquittal was institutionally and politically unthinkable. As a result, the decision appears less a product of judicial independence and fairness than of a precarious balancing act—acknowledging the defendant’s medical fragility while avoiding a ruling that would anger extremist segments of public opinion.
The case may proceed to the Court of Cassation, Egypt’s highest judicial authority. In principle, the Cassation Court can overturn convictions tainted by procedural violations, order retrials, or dismiss cases entirely. In practice, however, cassation proceedings are notoriously slow, often requiring one to three years, sometimes even longer. During this period, Sabry Kamel—elderly, gravely ill, and already weakened by major cardiac surgery—will remain behind bars under harsh conditions.
There is therefore a serious humanitarian concern: given his age and medical state, he may not survive long enough to benefit from a possible correction of the judicial record. In effect, even the reduced sentence functions as a de facto death penalty.
Judicial Vulnerability to Sectarian Pressure
The Kamel case must be read in the broader context of Egypt’s handling of “sectarianly sensitive” cases involving Coptic defendants. For decades, courts have struggled to insulate themselves from public rage, political expectations, and pressures exerted by influential local actors. The patterns familiar from earlier cases—such as the Soad Thabet case—reappear here: the preference for informal “reconciliation,” the reluctance of security services to conduct proper investigations, and the judiciary’s sensitivity to popular mobilization.
The case is emblematic of the vulnerabilities in Egypt’s judiciary when confronted with sectarian agitation, not to mention religious bias of many judges. At the first-degree level, the court functioned under overt mob intimidation, resulting in an unsound conviction. The Appeals Court, constrained by the threat of renewed unrest, declined to overturn the verdict despite glaring weaknesses in the evidence. Now the Cassation process may stretch well beyond the life expectancy of an elderly and seriously ill defendant.
At every step, justice has been compromised. The cumulative effect is a ruling that raises profound questions about the neutrality and fairness of the judiciary in Egypt and its ability to administer justice impartially cases where Coptic Christians are involved.
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Background of the Case
Sabry Kamel, a 79-year-old Coptic Christian and part-time volunteer accountant at Al-Karma Christian School, was accused in early 2024 of molesting a five-year-old student. From the outset, serious irregularities undermined the integrity of the case. According to case documents, the Damanhour police failed, for more than ten months, to provide required investigative reports to the Public Prosecution—despite over ten formal requests between February and December 2024. When finally submitted, the police asserted they were “unable to determine the facts.”
The case was twice archived for insufficient evidence. Identification sessions revealed that the child pointed to someone other than Kamel in two out of five attempts. The case was later reopened in early 2025 on the basis of uncorroborated hearsay from a third party who was not present at the presumed incident. Multiple testimonies from school staff—Muslim and Christian alike—confirmed that, logistically, it would have been impossible for Kamel to access the kindergarten bathrooms, which were fenced off and located in a separate building.
Despite these contradictions, the case was propelled forward by online disinformation campaigns and fabricated claims later recanted by their authors. Public agitation intensified, inflaming sectarian tensions.
First-Degree Court Under Mob Pressure
On 30 April 2025, the Damanhour Criminal Court issued a life sentence—the harshest available. Eyewitness accounts and commentary in the case file state that the courthouse was encircled by hostile crowds, including Salafist and Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers, chanting for the defendant’s execution. The judge was not merely aware of the mob’s demands but visibly operating under its pressure.
This environment produced serious procedural breaches. The charge was escalated on the spot from “molestation without force” to “molestation with force,” without adjournment or giving the defense time to respond—an improper and extraordinary deviation from normal procedure. The life sentence followed immediately. Even the complainant’s own lawyer later admitted that the case “would have collapsed without the mob shouting outside the courthouse.”
