It's the kind of internationally published story that the current military-led (soon to be run by former Field Marshall Abdel Fattah el-Sisi) Egyptian government have been worried about. A brilliant 17-year-old science student, opposed to he what he calls the "violent crackdowns" by Egyptian authorities on Islamists and anti-government protesters, afraid for his own safety, asks for political asylum in the United States. Abdullah Assem, who was described as "somewhat of a genius", was known in Egypt as "The Little Inventor". He invented eyeglasses for quadriplegics to operate computers and communicate with others, and was in Los Angeles earlier this week to showcase his project, "Eye Detection and Tracking-Based Communication System for Tetraplegia Patients", at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. When he arrived on May 12th, with a Ministry of Education chaperone, his passport was taken away by the Egyptian consulate. This convinced him, he later wrote on Facebook, that he was going to be arrested on his return to Egypt. Then on May 15th he contacted the Los Angeles office of the Council on Islamic and American Relations to say he was afraid to return to Egypt for fear that he would be imprisoned. On April 25th he has been arrested for allegedly taking part in a protest in Cairo's Bab El-Louk district where two police cars were burned. Assem, who is from Assuit, said the charges are a fabrication, and that he was just in the neighbourhood to buy electronic parts for his science project. Regardless, he was jailed for a week, where his lawyer alleges he was brutally mistreated. But Assam thinks the real reason he faces punishment is that he was so outspoken about the events after the military takeover of Egypt in late June of 2013. "I don't have any political inclination at the moment," he wrote on his Facebook account on May 18th. "But I absolutely reject the blood, and I'm against the massacres that occurred in Egypt during the past period just like anyone who respects humanity." Assem, with the blessing of his parents, has now gone into hiding and asked for political asylum in the United States. "Yes I am afraid to return [to] Egypt, who is not afraid nowadays?" Assem also wrote on his Facebook page. "I was willing to come back to take my final exams, but when I felt that security forces will arrest me as soon as I arrive [in] Cairo, I decided to stay," he added. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security reports that requests for political asylum by Egyptians have dramatically increased in the past two years, first under the Mohammed Morsi-led regime and then under the current one. Sharon Rummery, a spokeswoman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in San Francisco, told the Los Angeles Times that "her agency would not be authorized to discuss an asylum application, even if one had been filed on behalf of Assem." There are five criteria for asylum, which can lead to citizenship, and two of them are fear of political leanings and membership in a social group, she said. Immigration experts contacted by various media sources in the U.S. say it's very likely that Assem's request will be granted, since he has already once been jailed for his political views. The incident is an embarrassment to the Egyptian government and its supporters and also poses a problem to the U.S. "For the United States, it could pose a delicate decision: to add a new irritant to its badly strained relations with Cairo, or to risk the anger of human rights advocates for sending a juvenile back to a brutal Egyptian prison," the New York Times said in an editorial. Emad Shahin is an internationally respected political scientist who fled Egypt just before the new government filed espionage charges against him. He now works at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington a public policy scholar. "There is a lack of tolerance for any kind of dissent, and this case shows the randomness by which the regime cracks down," Mr. Shahin told the Times on May 21st. "There's a deep sentiment among many scholars that this regime is stifling and killing their skills and talents, and this is in the larger context of many young Egyptians' being targeted."
