A photo shared online of the book burning in the Fadl School yard on Monday, 6 April 2015
Egypt's administrative prosecution has ordered an investigation into an incident earlier this month in which education officials reportedly burnt 73 books in a Cairo schoolyard.
The prosecution has also ordered the education ministry to halt its investigation into the matter, and to hand over all related documents.
In early April, a photo emerged online of education ministry officials holding Egyptian flags and watching a pile of books burn in the yard of the Fadl school in the Haram district of the Giza governorate, in Greater Cairo.
The officials included Bothaina Kishk, the head of the Giza educational directorate, who later told the media that the books were promoting "violence, radicalism and Muslim Brotherhood thought," and that "security authorities" had told her to burn them.
Last week, education minister Mohab El-Rafai ordered an investigation into the incident, following a number of Egyptians condemning the incident online.
Lawyer Mohamed Ibrahim Ahmed has filed a case against Kishk, accusing her of burning religious books without referring the matter to religious authorities Dar El-Ifta or Al-Azhar.
According to the school, the burnt books included J. Christopher Herold’s Bonaparte in Egypt and works by famed authors Sheikh Abdel-Raziq and Abd El-Razzak El-Sanhuri about reform in Islam.
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