On September 23, 2012, Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood President Muhammad Morsi issued presidential order No 1/2012 appointing 3,649 judges to Emergency State Security Courts (ESSC). The ESSC, which operated during Egypt's 31-year state of emergency under the previous Hosni Mubarak regime, and the military transition to Morsi's June, 2012 election to power,  have notoriously violated basic due process guarantees. Today (11/28/12), consistent with both that three decades long ignoble history, and Islam's ongoing, millennial, Sharia-based rejection of freedom of speech, an Egyptian state security court issued a verdict which sentenced six (or seven) expatriate Coptic Egyptians to the death penalty for "blaspheming" Islam. Egyptian Judge Saif al Nasr Soliman stated, The [seven] accused persons were convicted of insulting the Islamic religion through participating in producing and offering a movie that insults Islam and its prophet. Their specific "crime" was involvement in the...(Read Full Post)