At the
In Dashasha
Father Malak Shehata says the church was built 100 years ago and was never since restored. Throughout ten long years, he claims, he tried in every way to obtain an official permit to restore the by now dilapidated building, to no avail. When the floors recently collapsed, he decided he just had to do some urgent repairs to the building the condition of which was now life threatening.
Some of the seven Copts detained had not been in the village in the first place when the incident took place.
“My son was at the neighbouring village of Ahnasia that Sunday morning,” Youssef Samaan, father of one of the detainees said. “The police broke into our house the following day at dawn, beat my son harshly and arrested him. When I later went to the police station to ask about him, the policemen abused and threatened me.”
Labib Rizq told Watani that the police broke into their home looking for his son Mina. When they could not find Mina, who has been away, working in Hurghada for the past three months “They merely changed his name on the arrest warrant into mine and seized me instead,” Rizq said.
The villagers have been contacting several rights groups to publicise their case and, on Thursday evening the detainees were released on bail.
Ezbet Bushra
In another Beni Sweif village, Ezbet Bushra, a rumour which spread like wildfire earlier this month caused a torching spree which targeted the agricultural lands of Copts and absolutely destroyed all their crops.
Copts constitute some 40 per cent of the population of Ezbet Bushra. Last July, Father Ishaq Qastour was assigned by Beni-Sweif bishopric to serve the Coptic congregation in the village. He arrived there and took residence at a three-storey house in the village, owned by the bishopric. He lived on the first floor, while the second floor was used to hold prayer meetings or services. Adjacent to the house lay a 124-square metre piece of land which the bishopric had purchased a year earlier and erected a fencing wall around. Earlier this month a rumour circulated in the village that the bishopric was planning to build a church on the land. After Friday prayers on 8 August, a Muslim mob attacked the wall and destroyed it, then torched the nearby Coptic-owned fields, burning all the crops. The police was called and the Copts filed an official complaint citing their losses, but an unofficial reconciliation was later orchestrated through the local politicians, and the Copts renounced their complaint.
Last year a bloody attack was waged against Copts, their homes, and property in the
In Bayad
Meanwhile, also in Beni Sweif, the police blockaded the Monastery of the Holy Virgin at Bayad, in the vicinity of Bayad al-Arab village. Copts had demonstrated in the village and held a sit-in in the monastery to protest police failure to find two young Copts who had recently disappeared. The 25-year-old young man Saad Wahba Saad, who has a mental disability, had gone missing three days earlier, and was rumoured to have been taken by two Muslim young men to convert him to Islam. Another young Coptic woman from the village has also gone missing. The sit-in at Bayad was dispersed under police pressure, but the missing people were not found.