Egypt- After thirteen months of being jailed and tortured for marrying a Muslim woman who had converted to Christianity, Boulos Farid Rezek-Allah Awad, was finally released and allowed to emigrate to Canada.

Rezek-Allah was arrested by security police in Cairo last year for breaking Egyptian law by secretly marrying a former Muslim woman. According to Islamic law, a Christian man is forbidden to marry a Muslim woman in Egypt, where Muslim citizens are not allowed to change their religion.

Two years ago, Rezek-Allah and his wife were secretly wed, and they planned to emigrate to Canada. In order to avoid any troubles, they lived separately while waiting for their immigration papers from the Canadian Embassy.

Unfortunately, before they could leave, Egyptian police authorities obtained copies of his wife's new Christian I.D. and marriage certificate, revealing that she had been baptised three years earlier and had married Rezek-Allah.

Rezeh-Allah has been detained in jail for thirteen months since then, but he was released on 1st June last year. However, he was kept under continual surveillance and intimidation by the police even after release. During his two subsequent attempts to leave for Canada, through Cairo airport in August and across the Libyan border in November, he was turned back by Egyptian authorities.

Egyptian security police officials told Rezek-Allah last November that he was permanently blacklisted from leaving Egypt. They vowed to track down and punish his wife for her "illegal" marriage to a Christian.

Finally, Rezek-Allah flew out of Cairo International Airport to Canada last month, shortly before his Canadian immigration visa was due to expire. A few weeks earlier, his wife Enas Yehya Abdel Aziz had escaped the country to claim refugee status abroad.

Rezek-Allah was interrogated and tortured for weeks at Cairo's El-Shobra police station, where officers hung him by his arms and beat him, trying to find out his wife's whereabouts. But Enas (Rezek-Allah's wife) had gone into strict hiding, foiling police attempts to track her down.

"So after they lost hope of catching Enas, they allowed me to depart from Egypt," Rezek-Allah said. "But I am not sure that even now they know which country she went, and where she is now."

Rezek-Allah said that he himself did not know all the details surrounding his wife’s recent escape from Egypt. But after she managed to leave the country, the Canadian government granted her refugee status, citing the religious persecution she faced in her homeland for converting from Islam to Christianity.

Enas plans to enter English language classes in her new homeland. Her husband, meanwhile, is studying for his final pharmacy-license exams in Canada this coming August.

"It had been a long, stressful 13 months since I was arrested and separated from my wife under the threat of never being reunited. But I think now, I begin to forget all this, God has healed my mind and my heart. We know that God is good," Rezek-Allah said, "and that He will complete doing every good thing in us and for us."