The monks of Abu-Fana monastery have been under heavy pressure from the security apparatus of Minya, the local MP Alaa’ Hassanein, and Minya governorate officials to relinquish the testimonies they had submitted against the ‘Arabs’—as the tribal desert dwellers in Egypt are commonly termed. The Arabs had brutally attacked the desert monastery last May, torched its church, buildings, and farmlands, injured four monks and abducted and brutally tortured three others. Ibrahim Taqi, who was visiting his monk brother Father Mina, was also abducted and is still missing.
Home for Ramadan
A source of the Coptic Orthodox Church said that the monks were pressured to give up their claims so that the 13 Arabs detained by the police on charges of attacking the monastery would be released and go back home to spend the Muslim holy month of Ramadan with their families.
Moreover, the Church source said, the contractor brothers Rifaat and Ibrahim Fawzy, who were detained and charged with murdering the Arab Khalil Mohamed during the attack, despite the fact that they were not on the site at that time, were also being pressured to pay a ransom to Mohamed’s family to settle the matter between them. This is tantamount to admitting they had committed the crime, even though the after-death investigation on Mohamed proved them innocent of the charge. Mohamed, it was proved, was shot from less than 1.5m distance away, while the witnesses who claimed the Fawzys had shot him, and based upon whose testimony the Fawzys were detained and charged, had testified that they shot him at some 60m length.
Apart from the gross injustice inflicted upon the Fawzys, the real culprit stands to run free.
For protection
Since last May Minya governor General Ahmed Diaa’ Eddin insisted on disregarding the criminal acts against the monks and monastery, while casting the attack in the light of a land dispute between the monastery and the Arabs. He claimed the monastery’s right to the land was not clear, even though the bishopric was in possession of the ownership documents and was paying the due annual land tax. The matter appeared to be facing an impasse, and the Church appealed to President Mubarak to intervene for a fair solution.
Finally, Pope Shenouda III while in Cleveland, Ohio, for medical treatment last month agreed to resolve the crisis through giving up 95 feddans (a feddan is 400 square metres of land) of the monastery’s 600 feddan-land in exchange for the right to build a fencing wall around its grounds to protect the monks and maintain peace. At the same time, the Arabs were given 10,000 feddans in the vicinity of the monastery. The agreement was concluded through an unofficial committee formed of Coptic and Muslim businessmen and MPs.
Unresolved
Right from the start, though, the agreement was fraught with problems. Minya governor first decided he was not licensing the fencing wall until the land agreement was legalised, a matter that is expected to take several years. Following strong reaction from the Church and, as is widely circulated, intervention from the presidency, he backed up and licensed the wall, the foundation stone of which was laid in an official ceremony some two weeks ago. The agreement stipulated that the wall should be built within a renewable two month period.
In a meeting which ensued between the governor and the monks, he promised to supply the monastery with electricity and fresh water, the lines of which cross adjacent to the monastery lands but were never connected to the monastery.
Last Sunday, however, the governor issued an order that the wall should be 1.5m high instead of the originally agreed-upon 4m high. This infuriated the monks, who remarked that a 1.5m high wall offers no protection and would moreover be swiftly covered by the sand dunes. The matter is as yet unresolved.
Threats
A new crisis erupted last week between Minya governor General Ahmed Diaa’ Eddin and the Church when he threatened to go back on his promise of supplying the monastery with electricity and fresh water. He threatened as well that the fencing wall which he finally licensed and which should run around the periphery of the monastery’s grounds should be completed in two months with no chance to extend that period as was stipulated in the original agreement. Given that the police recently confiscated the loader belonging to the monastery in an act considered by the monks as unjustified police harassment, and that the digging is being done manually so far, building the wall in that space of time is a practically impossible task.
The governor made his threat subject to an official declaration by Mallawi bishopric that its lawyer Ihab Ramzy did not represent the Church nor was he a spokesman for the monastery, and that the bishopric rejects his criticism of the governor. General Diaa’ Eddin demanded that the bishopric should pressure Ramzy to offer the governor a public apology. Ramzy, who had publicly criticised the governor for his stance vis à vis Abu-Fana monastery and had said that the unofficial committee had given the pope non-precise information on the crisis, promptly resigned from legally representing the bishopric.
No need for law
For his part, MP Hassanein said that the best way to resolve the Abu-Fana crisis was through unofficial reconciliation; away from the law, he said. All the detainees, he said, should be released through an unofficial settlement with the monks. As to the matter of the monastery’s loader, it was a traffic police problem, he said, which cannot be solved unofficially.
In prison
Watani talked to the Fawzy brothers who are at present detained in Minya prison. Rifaat Fawzy said he had been in Gabal al-Teir monastery in Samalout when the attack occurred. He was questioned by the police and expected to be released following the questioning, but was astounded to find himself detained and charged with murder. As for Ibrahim Fawzy, he was detained three days later, during which interval of time he had been circulating news of his brother’s detention and innocence on the Internet and in the media. “In order for the murder charge to appear credible, a charge of possession of weapons was fabricated against my brother and me,” Ibrahim said. “We never owned guns nor do we know how to use them,” he said. “The after-death investigation on Khalil has proved our innocence, yet we are still detained. For heaven’s sake, how can two persons fire one shot?”
Both brothers said they will not pay the ransom. They said they did not own that kind of money; they lived day-to-day and had large families to support. It is circulated that Coptic businessman Eid Labib, who was among the members of the unofficial committee that met the pope in