More on the Copts here.

Islamism Exposed in Egypt

Reuters 
Austraian News Agency  
Boston Globe   
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The Associated Press  
The Washington Times 
Other News Agencies

Egyptian Coptic Christians allege police torture

 CAIRO, Sept 23 (Reuters) - Coptic Christian clergy in Egypt  have contacted
human rights groups and ministries alleging that  police tortured 1,000
members of the minority church living in a  southern village, a priest said
on Wednesday.  

``What happened in our village was totally inhumane,'' said  Paula Fouad, a
priest at the archbishopric which supervises the  Coptic church in Kashah,
400 km (250 miles) south of Cairo.  

Fouad said he and Kashah's prieset, Gabriel Abdel-Masih,  this month sent a
protest letter to the Egyptian Centre for  Human Rights and National Unity
(ECHRNU), the Egyptian  Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR) and Egypt's
interior  ministry.  

The letter, obtained by Reuters, alleged police in Kashah  ``detained about
1,000 villagers and tortured them.''  

Fouad alleged the motive was to try to elicit confessions  for the murder
in mid-August of two Copts in Kashah.  

``For 30 days, they were torturing everyone, even women and  children,'' he
said, adding they were beaten, flogged and  electrocuted.  

An interior ministry official contacted on Wednesday  referred queries
about Copts to the foreign ministry.  

Naela Gabr, head of the foreign ministry's human rights  department, said
she was not aware of the case but ``an  investigation would immediately be
opened if the villagers  themselves complained to the foreign ministry.''  

ECHRNU Chairman Moris Sadeq told Reuters he received the  protest letter
and was investigating while EOHR's Mahmoud Kandil  said he also received
the letter but could not confirm the  police action was on religious
grounds.  

Both organisations said they were prompted to follow the  case after the
church took the unusual step of faxing rights  groups for ``urgent help to
save the Copts of Kashah.''  

Kandil said: ``Normally Coptic leaders solve their problems  with police
quietly. This is a sign that the police were really  harsh on them.''  

The EOHR has said police often use force to extract  confessions,
especially in the less-developed Upper Egypt area.  

Official figures say there are six million Copts in  predominantly Moslem
Egypt. According to the EOHR, 96 Copts were  among about 1,300 people
killed in violence by Moslem militants  since they started their bid to
overthrow the government in 1992.

Copyright 1998 Reuters News Service. All rights reserved. This material may
not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. <Picture>

Australian News Agency

On November 17, 1997, fifty-eight foreign tourists and four Egyptians
were killed in a massacre of tourists in the temple of Queen Hatshepsut in
Deir el-Bahari, near Luxor.
The Luxor massacre was the culmination of a five-year war by the Muslim
extremists, al-Gama’a al Islamiya, against the tourist industry in Egypt, a
war intended to pressure the Egyptian government into submitting to the
extremists demands for Egypt to be an Islamic state based on Sharia law.
But the Egyptian Muslim extremists are also waging another war. Egypt’s
Christian minority is terrorized by al-Gama’a al Islamiya and the Egyptian
government is complicit in this war.
Coptic Christians are deliberately and arbitrarily executed by al-Gama’a al
Islamiya, primarily in the Upper Egypt governorates, as the group advances
its aim of a pure Islamic state. Christian youths, farmers, businessmen,
doctors, pharmacists and jewelers have been murdered, in fact whole
families and congregations have been massacred.
Egypt is the most populous of all the Arab nations, with around
fifty-nine million people and a Christian population estimated at about
eight million. The Coptic Christian Church is the native church of Egypt,
founded by Saint Mark when he visited Egypt during the days of Nero, in the
earliest days of Christianity. By the 6th century the Coptic Church
included most of Egypt, however numerous Arab and Turkish invasions and forced
conversions under threat of death produced the Arab Muslim nation of Egypt
we see today.
One form of terrorism inflicted upon the Copts by Islamic extremists under
the very nose of the Egyptian government is the kidnapping of their
daughters.
The International Coptic Federation (ICF) has documented over three
hundred cases of kidnappings of Coptic girls in this past year. One ICF
representative reports that many believe the figure could be as high as
twelve hundred per year.
The girls are kidnapped, raped and forced to marry Muslim men. Girls
fortunate enough to effect an escape from their captors are arrested by the
police and locked up for their protection until their husbands can
collect them. Families of these girls are denied access to their daughters.
The ICF believes the Egyptian government is making no effort to catch
the kidnappers or find the stolen girls. The police have told Bishops and
families that there is no hope and they should forget about finding the
girls.
Today Egypt exists in a state of emergency with Emergency law that
permits arrests and detention on the basis of suspicion or on the basis of
an individuals or groups real or perceived threat to public order and
security. The most recent abuse of this power by the security forces (SSI)
is the arrest of over one thousand two hundred Coptic Christians in Sohag,
on the 15th of August 1998.
Two Christian youths, twenty-five year old Samir Aweda Hakim and
twenty-seven year old Karam Tamer Arsal, had been murdered by Muslim
extremists on the night of the 14th of August 1998, in the village of El-
Kasheh, Dar Al-Salam, Sohag.
H.G. Bishop Wissa, bishop of El-Baliana, Sohag, is a sixty-year-old
Coptic Bishop who wears the traditional long beard and black vestments of
the Coptic clergy. According the Bishop Wissa, the killers belong to family
of gangsters with a family member who is an influential member of the
secret
police. Bishop Wissa reported their names to the National Security
Inspector of the Sohag Governorate. Town residents supported his testimony.
Using the Emergency laws, the security forces arrested over one thousand
two hundred Christians on the supposed basis of preventing sectarian strife.
The police feared that arresting Muslims would cause severe unrest so they have
been attempting to frame a Christian suspect.
The detained Christians face horrendous tortures, says Bishop Wissa,  of
electric shocks to the genitals, whipping, and being suspended from the
ceiling by hands that are cuffed behind the victim s back.
In the courtyard of the Church of the Angel in Al-Kosheh, hundreds of
residents gathered to show their rope burns and bruises and tell of
electric shocks to ears and genitals.
The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR) has reported
widespread use of torture and ill treatment in police stations and prisons,
where torture is used by police to coerce confessions and obtain
information. In the past five years, twelve deaths from torture at the
hands of the police have been reported. The violations of human rights by the
police and security forces in Egypt is a national problem, not just a
Christian one, said Mr. Abo-Saeda, the general secretary of the EOHR.

Mr. Michael Meunier, the Executive Director of the International
Coptic Federation, reported in an October 10th press release, that Bishop Wissa
and two other Coptic priests, Fr. Antonios and Fr.Shenouda, had been
interrogated for several hours by the general prosecutor of the Governorate
of Sohag. The three clerics have been charged with charged with crimes that
relate to Egypts antiterrorism laws and contain five counts pertaining to
threatening national security and spreading extremist ideas to cause
sectarian strife, and are punishable by death.
Hafez Abo-Saeda, general secretary of the Egyptian Organization for
Human Rights said, This is a dramatic case of random arrest, torture and
degradation of hundreds of people. We have never seen a case as widespread
and systematic as this.

Elizabeth Kendal (freelance human rights writer)

Coptic cleric's plight fuels a religious rift in Egypt

By Charles M. Sennott, Globe Staff, 10/15/98

EL BALYANA, Egypt - A bishop of the Coptic Church here faces charges that
carry the death penalty under government sedition laws after speaking out
against ''systemic, inhuman and unspeakable'' police abuse against
Christians in this remote region of Upper Egypt.

The five-count indictment against Bishop Wissa - as well as allegations of
torture and brutal interrogations of hundreds of Christians in a small
farming village in the Nile Delta - has triggered a national wave of anger
in recent days among the minority Coptic Christians in this overwhelmingly
Islamic nation.

"Rather than address allegations of torture, they arrested the bishop. It
is an outrage. The Christian community was already angry and now it is
furious," said the Rev. Pula Fuad, a Coptic priest from the diocese who has
been working with the families who suffered at the hands of the police.

This case has enraged Muslims and Christians alike. The story has unfolded
amid rising claims of discrimination against Christians in Egypt, where
Islamic fundamentalism has eadily taken root in many levels of society.

The Coptic Church is the native Christian church of Egypt. It traces its
roots back to St. Mark the Evangelist, and prides itself on orthodoxy.
Egypt's Coptic minority represents roughly 9 percent of the country's
population of 60 million.

Wissa's arrest last weekend brought to a boiling point tensions that
began simmering two months ago. On Aug. 14, two Christian residents of the
village of Al Kosheh, within Wissa's diocese about 35 miles north of Luxor,
were killed and their bodies dumped in the Christian
section of town.

Christian religious leaders, human rights workers and residents of the
town believe that the two men were killed by five Muslim men and have
offered evidence to substantiate their case. But the Christians say that
police have dismissed claims against the Muslims and have run
roughshod over the Christian community to frame a Christian suspect.

They accuse the police of ignoring evidence incriminating the Muslim
suspects to avoid the potential unrest that could erupt between Muslims and
Christians if Muslims were arrested.
What began as murder - not uncommon in Upper Egypt, where internecine clan
wars and honor killings abound - has stirred deep emotions over religious
differences in a town that is 30 percent Christian and 70 percent Muslim.

In the past six weeks, police have rounded up more than 1,200 Christian
residents of Al-Kosheh for questioning. Many of these allegedly included
the use of blindfolds, beatings and electric shocks. There are also reports
of victims being bound and hung from window grates inside police detention
centers. Detainees have been held for as long as two weeks without being
formally charged.

Several women interviewed by the Globe said they were verbally assaulted
and threatened with rape. They also said that two children under the age of
2 were thrown to the floor in an attempt to force testimony that their
husbands did the killings.

Wissa claims that two Christian conscripts from the Army were forced to
testify against a Christian man who now stands charged. The father of one
of the men told Wissa that the testimonies were forced and that they wanted
to retract them. When Wissa intervened and brought the issue to the
attention of Coptic Pope Shenuda III in Cairo and the office of President
Hosni Mubarak, the local police grew furious and called in Wissa for
questioning about what they termed ''obstruction of justice.'' Wissa, a
respected, 60-year-old Christian cleric who wears the traditional long
beard and black vestments of the Coptic clergy, was detained and
interrogated on Saturday and then released on bail pending a hearing. "What
happened here," Wissa said in an interview, ''was systemic, inhuman and
unspeakable ... The police have treated the people of our church as less
than human. And apparently they see me as a terrorist.
Do I look dangerous to you?''

Inside the courtyard of the Church of the Angel in Al-Kosheh, hundreds of
residents gathered Monday to make their own claims of police abuse.
Dozens held up arms and ankles that appeared raw from rope burns and
bruised limbs. They charged that the police had used an electric generator
with a hand crank to shock their ears and in some cases genitals.

A man named Moris held up his 14-month-old son, Gamel,and showed a
baseball-sized bruise on the child's lower back that he claimed was
inflicted when the police threw the child to the ground in front of his
mother.

Human rights lawyers interpret the indictment against him as trumped-up
charges presented by a regional court. It contains five counts, including
''threatening national security'' and ''spreading extremist ideas to cause
sectarian strife.''

Because the charges fall under Egypt's antiterrorism laws, lawyers for the
Coptic Church and human rights organizations said that they could carry the
death penalty. But they also hoped a higher court would dismiss them.

Government officials have not commented other than to say that they are
investigating the allegations of police abuse. Senior presidential adviser
Osama El Baz said in an interview ''What has happened in Al-Kosheh is a
local criminal matter and it does not reflect any wider problem between the
Muslims and Christians of Egypt.''

Hafez Abo-Seada, secretary general of the Egyptian Human Rights
Organization, said, ''This is a dramatic case of random arrest, torture,
and degradation of hundreds of people. We have never seen a case as
widespread and systemic as this.'' 

But Abo-Saeda said the significance of the case has less to do with
problems between Egypt's Muslims and Christians than with human rights
violations by the state.
''The violations of human rights by the police and security forces in Egypt
is a national problem,'' he said, ''not just a Christian one.''

This story ran on page A01 of the Boston Globe on
10/15/98.
© Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company.

Bishop arrested for witness tampering

Mandy Fahmy Special to the Middle East Times - Egypt Oct.18.98

Bishop Wissa of Sohag and two of his priests were arrested during the first
week of October and charged with damaging relations between Copts and Muslims
in a story that has more to do with Egyptian police brutality than sectarian
tensions. The Bishop was charged under a number of articles in the penal code
accusing him of promoting ideas damaging to national unity and social peace,
using religion to promote extremist thought, attempting to influence judges
and tampering with witnesses and evidence.

How could one bishop from Sohag accomplish all this? When two soldiers
appeared at the public prosecution office in Sohag with a lawyer and recanted
their testimony in a controversial murder case in September, they were
detained and their change of heart attributed to the incitement of Bishop
Wissa. The bishop and two of his priests were taken in custody and charged.
They were released on bail of E£100 each

"I did not incite them to do anything, I only advised the father that if his
son's conscience is bothering him, he should relieve it," Bishop Wissa told
the Middle East Times.

The story began in mid-August with the murder of two people in the
predominantly Coptic Upper Egyptian village of Kosheh. The police reaction to
the murder was widely believed by observers, including the Egyptian Human
Rights Organization (EOHR), to be an attempt to avoid stirring up sectarian
tensions. Since the victims were two Christians, it was apparently decided
that the murderer would also have to be a Christian. According to Bishop Wissa
and the EOHR report, 50-60 people were detained every day and interrogated for
information relating to the murders. Victims allege that the police used
torture.

Estimates of the number of people forcefully questioned by the police reach
1,200. The first accused was the family of a girl rumored to have had
relations with one of the victims. Her father and two brothers were arrested
but refused to confess under

pressure. Finally the police chose their prime suspect, a man named Shaibub
William and produced two witnesses. William was arrested based on the
testimony of the witnesses. The testimony haunted one of the men so much that
his father finally went to see the bishop and ask him for his advice. Wissa
said that he only told the father that the boy should do what he thought was
the right thing. Accompanied by a lawyer the two soldiers went to the
prosecutor's office in Sohag and recanted their testimony.

The head prosecutor promptly detained them and went looking for the Bishop
whom he claimed had incited them. During the police's strenuous activities in
the village, Bishop Wissa often complained to the authorities, first in the
village, then the governorate, then to the Ministry of Interior, about the
treatment of his villagers.

The Interior Ministry sent a representative who met with the bishop and the
victims of the police's attentions. In an official statement from the Interior
Ministry, it was announced that "only 17 Christians and eight Muslims were
detained and that they were certain that Shaibub William was guilty as
charged." The Ministry of Interior did not answer any further queries from
Middle East Times. The Egyptian government has been a sensitive about the
Sohag incident because they do not want it to be turned into a Muslim-Copt
issue that might be used by critics of the regime abroad. Wissa himself,
however, says that the whole issue has little to do with religious tensions.

"It has nothing to do with religion. Christians and Muslims have been co-
existing in the village, in all of Sohag, in harmony," he said

"We have never seen any problems between Muslims and Copts," added the
bishop.

"Police actions have nothing to do with religion. They just want to show that
they're working." Long time observers of Egyptian police point out the
mistreatment of civilians is commonplace in police stations

"The use of violence is in some cases unjustified and leads to aggravating
the situation rather than resolving it," says Rafiq Habib, a Coptic Protestant
intellectual and co- founder of the nascent Wasat party

"The phenomena started with confrontations with militant Islamist groups and
increased." Habib and others emphasize that rather than specifically targeting
Christians, security forces have a tendency to mistreat all Egyptians equally.

An advisor to the French President, consulting on the efficiency of security
forces after the Luxor incident said that the state placed its best elements
in tourist areas. Police in the remoter villages simply do not have the
training to deal with critical situations and resolve them peacefully.

Outrage Over Egypt Police Brutality

The Associated Press

By ANTHONY SHADID

EL-KUSHEH, Egypt (AP) -- It began inconspicuously. Two young Christians killed
in a poor region of Egypt known for its vendettas and guns.

The police crackdown that followed in the mostly Christian farming town wasn't
commonplace, however. Villagers, human rights groups and church officials say
hundreds were arrested in a monthlong campaign of terror that included
torture, threats of rape, hostage-taking and even bribes to officers for
lenient treatment.

The story has struck a nerve in Egypt and abroad because it touches on a
sensitive matter: the status of Egypt's small and sometimes vulnerable
Christian minority.

But beneath the charges and recriminations may rest a bigger question about
abuses by a powerful security force that fought and defeated Islamic
militants. Many say it now seems to act as a law unto itself, with little
oversight and less accountability.

``It is not a matter of national unity,'' said Rifaat el-Said, an Egyptian
opposition leader. ``It is a matter of the behavior of the police and a matter
of human rights.''

The ordeal began with the overtones of religious strife, a specter that hangs
ominously over southern Egypt and its Coptic Christian minority. For years,
Muslim militants occasionally targeted them as part of their insurgency
against the government that has cost more than 1,250 lives since 1992.

The two men, aged 25 and 27, were found dead in front of a village school in
August. Human rights groups and villagers said police feared the killer was
Muslim and were wary of the repercussions that might have on a town 70 percent
Christian and 30 percent Muslim. Police, they said, wanted a Christian
suspect.

In ensuing weeks, reports said hundreds were detained, including elderly
residents, women and even an 18-month-old boy taken in with his mother.
Villagers said more than 1,000 were detained; human rights investigators said
it was at least 300. ``The police acted as their temper dictated,'' said
Basada Gabriel Abdel-Masih, a priest in the village.

The government says only 14 people were detained as part of ``an ordinary
criminal investigation.'' About a dozen claims of torture were investigated,
and none was found to have occurred, said Nabil Osman, an Egyptian government
spokesman.

``There is no proof that there was torture,'' he said.

But at Abdel-Masih's Church of the Angel in el-Kusheh, where minarets and
steeples rise above the dirt roads and squat huts, villagers in dirty peasant
gowns, their faces swarthy from work in the fields, gathered to show the
aftermath of their detention.

The ankles and wrists of some still bore the signs of what they said were cuts
from plastic or rough cloth used to string them from the ceiling. Others
showed scars they said were left by electric shocks to their ears, abdomen and
genitals.

Boktor Abul-Yamin, a 60-year-old villager who police initially believed killed
the two men, said he received shocks and beatings until he vomited blood.
Police detained his entire family and threatened to rape his wife and
daughters, he said.

They also held him for 34 days, he said, then released him when another
Christian was charged.

``They beat me like a donkey,'' said Abul-Yamin. ``Now when I see a policeman
in the street, I think he's a devil. The way he looks, he's a devil.

``There are no laws in this village.''

Sensitive to any criticism of its treatment of Christians, the government has
reacted fiercely to suggestions the police crackdown was motivated by the
villagers' faith.

>From President Hosni Mubarak down, officials have said the charges are a plot
to discredit Egypt and that no discrimination -- legal or otherwise -- is
tolerated against Christians.

But critics say missing in the denials is any pledge to curb the excesses by
police, a force the Egyptian Organization of Human Rights said acted as though
they enjoyed ``total immunity from accountability and punishment.''

The crackdown in El-Kusheh follows another widely reported incident in which
the brother of a theft suspect was killed in custody, reportedly by
electrocution. His death provoked a riot in April in the Nile Delta town of
Belqas.

``Security is like a fire,'' warned Milad Hanna, a Coptic Christian and former
lawmaker. ``A small amount is useful and gives warmth. A big amount engulfs
the whole house.''

AP-NY-10-31-98 1533EST

Copyright 1998 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP.

Persecuting Egypt's Christians

5am -- November 4, 1998    The Washington Times

EDITORIAL

dangerous intermediary has been added to the already challenging peace
process in the Middle East: President Mubarak of Egypt. President Clinton sees
him as a key player in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. And
well he might be. But he would have more credibility in that role if he hadn't
turned his back on threats to peace and human rights in his own country. Over
the past three years, and in the past two months especially, the Cairo
government has turned a blind eye to the persecution of Coptic Christians, a
group that traces its heritage to the first century and makes up around 6
percent of Egypt's population of 65 million.
     Since two Christians were killed, reportedly by five Muslims, on Aug. 14,
around 1,200 Christians from the Al-Kosheh region near Luxor in Upper Egypt
have been arrested and many of them tortured, according to the Egyptian
Organization for Human Rights.
     The Egyptian government seems to be doing its best to stifle reports
about the persecution. On Friday, Moris Sadek, the human rights lawyer who
helped get the story to the outside world, was informed that he would be
criminally charged under Article 186 of the Egyptian penal code for disturbing
the national peace and fermenting sectarianism, Josef Hassad of Freedom House
told The Washington Times' editorial page.
     President Mubarak said the allegations of torture were false and that
Copts enjoy all the rights that Muslims do. The Egyptian senate also said any
news account about Muslim discrimination against Copts was false.
     But for a country where there are supposedly no human rights violations
going on, far too many people aren't being allowed to tell their stories. Mr.
Sadek wasn't the first. The arrests began Aug. 15, when Christians in the
region expressed outrage at the killings, which the police claimed had been
committed by other Christians. Bishop Anba Wissa, the Coptic spiritual leader
of the El-Baliana region, and his priests made official complaints Aug. 19 and
20 to Lt. Said, a Secret Police inspector; to the governor of the Sohag
District; and to the chief of the Department of Security. The police chief
told them that the persecution would get worse as a result of the complaints,
according to a letter from Bishop Wissa obtained by The Washington Times.
     The local government continued rounding up the Christians, including men,
women and children in groups of 50 to 60 at a time. They were tied to doors
and beaten, and women and children were tortured with electric shock devices
to all parts of their bodies, according to the letter from Bishop Wissa. One
11-year-old boy, Roman Boctor, was hung upside down from an electric ceiling
fan and tortured as the fan rotated. Police attempted to rape his 14-year-old
sister, Hania, at the police station but her screams drew a crowd and the
police stopped.
     The bishop and two of his priests were arrested Oct. 10 on charges of
damaging national unity and insulting the government, crimes that can be
punished by death. Three Christians -- the father and two brothers of Roman
and Hania Boctor -- were also imprisoned but later were released after a visit
by an Interior Ministry official.
     But in a letter written in response to a protest by Reps. Joseph Pitts
and Tony Hall, Egyptian Ambassador Ahmed Maher El Sayed said Bishop Wissa had
escalated the incident by faxing false information to human rights groups.
They also referred to him as "known for his religious views and previous
record in stirring sectarianism." That's not how the Cairo-based Egyptian
Organization for Human Rights sees it. The independent organization determined
after an investigation in the town that his stories were true, and even
upgraded the number of estimated arrests from Bishop Wissa's 1,000 to 1,200.
     Senior presidential adviser Osama El Baz also wrote off the incident,
claiming that the doings in Al-Kosheh are a local criminal matter and do not
reflect any wider problem between the Muslims and Christians of Egypt,
according to an Oct. 15 Boston Globe article.
     But in the past three years, the Egyptian media alone have reported 40
Christians killed by Muslim extremists for failing to pay protection money,
and in 1997 there were 500 to 600 Christian girls forced to convert to Islam,
according to reports from a top Egyptian religious leader. Hafez Abo-Seada,
director of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, says the problems
reach beyond conflicts between the two religions. The violations of human
rights by the police and security forces in Egypt are a national problem, not
just a Christian one, he said in a Boston Globe interview.
     Whether this problem is limited to a region or the whole country, it's
got the Egyptians covering up. Mustafa Raslan, a famous Egyptian lawyer who
often defends cases against Islam, sued The Sunday Telegraph for $167 million
for its coverage of the story, and government officials are writing the issue
off as a localized incident.
     The U.S. gives $2 billion a year to Egypt, which ought to give us some
leverage over Cairo's inaction on this very serious matter. With 29 members of
the U.S. House now protesting the Egyptian human rights violations and waiting
for an explanation, and many world newspapers doing the same, this assault on
human rights can no longer be written off as an insignificant incident. It's
time Mr. Clinton reevaluated his latest peace partner.


Copyright © 1998 News World Communications, Inc.

1262Sunday 8 November 1998

Cover-up charge over Egypt police torture
By Christina Lamb

 
Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights
 
Egypt, Indefinite Detention and Systematic Torture: the Forgotten Victims -
Amnesty International
 
Religious persecution continues in Egypt - Maranatha Christian Journal

 Secretary-general of Egyptian Human Rights Organization detained [19 Sept
1998]- Arabic News
  
THE Egyptian government has launched an international publicity offensive in
the wake of disclosures in The Telegraph last month about a brutal police
crackdown on Christians in southern Egypt. Actions include paying for full-
page newspaper advertisements in cash and a lobbying campaign on the Internet.

Reports of the incident, in which more than 1,200 Coptic Christians were
arrested and subjected to tortures that included being manacled in the
crucifixion position while electric shocks were applied to their genitals,
caused outrage.

Some American newspapers called for a review of the country's £1.3 billion aid
programme to Egypt, while in Canada Coptic Christians held demonstrations
outside parliament.

Officials called the reports "hearsay". But critics say that rather than
investigate, Egypt is attempting a cover-up. Cairo fears that the bad
publicity will damage the moderate image conveyed by President Hosni Mubarak
and deter tourism, one of its most important sources of income.

In an extensive report on the crackdown in the village of Al-Sohag in Upper
Egypt, the independent Egyptian Human Rights Organisation accused the security
forces of the random arrest and intimidation of hundreds of people, hostage
taking and the use of torture to extract confessions.

Those who had spoken out, such as Bishop Anba Wissa, the community's spiritual
leader who collected depositions and photographs of those who had been raped
and tortured, and the human rights lawyer, Moris Sadek, have been arrested and
charged with "disturbing the national peace and fermenting sectarianism".
Believing his community will be left even more vulnerable if he is behind
bars, Bishop Wissa has now allowed the State Information Service to retract
his statements.

The Egyptian government has responded through an organisation purporting to
represent the Christians of Egypt by taking out full-page advertisements in
newspapers around the world, which representatives have been paying for in
cash.

And a web-site has been set up on the Internet with a form letter with which
The Telegraph has been flooded. Strangely, while the letter alleges that the
report was motivated by anti-Semitism, the site says that the newspaper is
owned by the Hollinger Group, which also owns the Israeli newspaper the
Jerusalem Post.

Helmy Guirghuis, the chairman of the British Coptic Federation, said: "The
people who have been writing in are not genuine Copts. They are stooges of the
Egyptian government. Many have official positions and have been heavily leant
on."

The newspaper advertisments, which claim that Muslims and Christians live in
harmony in Egypt, angered the Coptic community, many of whom are forced to
live outside Egypt because of the persecution they faced. Copts make up more
than eight per cent of Egypt's 60 million population and trace their heritage
back to the first century but the government refuses to recognise them as an
official minority.

Their history is not taught in schools, and Coptic communities need special
presidential licences to build a church or even install a lavatory in existing
places of worship. In the past three years the Egyptian media has reported the
killing of 40 Christians by Muslim extremists for failing to pay protection
money.

Copts writing to The Telegraph from Egypt said they were frightened to give
their names, but pleaded for the international community to heed their
concerns. The International Coptic Federation took out its own full-page
advertisment in the New York Times, calling on the United Nations to
investigate the situation of Coptic Christians in Egypt.

Mounir Bishay, the president of Christian Copts of California, said: "Rather
than playing ostrich, it would have been more credible for the Egyptian
government if they had ordered an investigation of these incidents instead of
outright denying they ever happened."

Amir Moussa, the Egyptian Foreign Minister, cancelled a planned visit to
London this week during which he was scheduled to give a lecture at Chatham
House. He claimed that an engagement had cropped up suddenly in the Middle
East.


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• The Armanious Family Massacre
• Egypt's Endangered Christians
• Egyptian Copts Murdered by Islamism
• Islamic Mafia in Egypt
• Four killed in Muslim rioting near Coptic churches in Alexandria
• List of Muslim terror attacks in Egypt

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