South Banha prosecution has referred Kamal Shawqy, the odd-job worker at the church of Mar-Morqos (St Mark) in Shubral-Kheima, Qalyoubiya, north of Cairo, to criminal court with charges of murdering the church’s priest Father Maqar Saad.
Fr Maqar, 63, was shot to death on 13 May 2019 by Shawqy who is in his fifties. Shawqy directly turned himself in to the police and confessed to commuting the crime. He said he held a grudge against the priest for refusing to give him the financial aid he demanded. A father of eight girls, the church had helped him marry off three of his daughters and was in the process of helping him with the marriage of his fourth daughter when the priest got to know that she had broken her engagement, so he withheld the financial aid for the marriage.
Shawqy admitted to having bought the gun secretly three years ago, and hid it in a store room on the fifth floor of the church building. He said that on the day Fr Maqar told him there would be no more money for his daughter, he climbed up to the store room, took the gun, and killed the priest. He also said he knew he would be captured on the church’s CCTV cameras, and desired everyone to see that he had killed the priest.
Official investigations revealed that Fr Maqar had received seven bullets in the head, face, and chest.
Rumors had circulated that investigations had revealed that the gun was an official weapon, meaning one used by the military or police, and was among the weapons robbed during the unrest of the Arab Spring in 2011, and later sold on the black market. This turned out to be untrue, however; the prosecution said the gun had been reported stolen a few years ago from an iron and steel dealer.
Investigations revealed that Shawqy had no history of psychological disorder, and had never been given any psychiatric treatment.
Watani International
26 May 2019