The defence team for the Copts who were obliged to leave their Giza hometown of Dahshur last Tuesday for fear of threats by the Muslim villagers against them, and whose homes and businesses were looted and torched
The defence team for the Copts who were obliged to leave their Giza hometown of Dahshur last Tuesday for fear of threats by the Muslim villagers against them, and whose homes and businesses were looted and torched, submitted a demand to the public prosecutor that the offenders should be caught. The demand included 22 names cited by eyewitnesses to have led the attacks against the Dahshur Coptic-owned homes and businesses.
President Mohamed Mursi yesterday issued orders, through a telephone call to Giza governor Ali Abdel-Rahman, that a commission should be formed within 24 hours to determine the losses and decide on the adequate compensation to the victims. He demanded that the governor should see to it that a climate of security should be ensured in Dahshur, so that the Copts should feel sufficiently safe to return home. President Mursi had declared last Friday that the Dahshur crisis will be resolved only through the implementation of the law. The Copts are waiting for his promises to materialise.
It started with a burnt shirt
The attack against the Copts had started last Tuesday and went on till Friday in the wake of an individual dispute five days earlier between a Muslim, Ahmed Sultan, and the Copt Sameh Youssef. Sultan’s shirt had been damaged while being pressed in a laundry owned by Youssef; the dispute that followed escalated into a large-scale fight when some 3000 Muslims mobbed the five-storey house of the Copt, broke into it and started plundering and torching it. In self-defence, Youssef began hurling Molotov cocktails at the crowd; the 19-year-old Muslim Muaz Hasaballah was hurt and, on Tuesday, died in hospital. The security authorities, fearing matters would get out of hand, asked the Copts to leave town directly for their own safety. The 110 Coptic families in town hurriedly fled, only for the Muslim townsmen to have a free hand in looting their homes and property. The security forces claim the crowd was beyond control; all the police could do was to protect the local church of Mar-Girgis (St George).
No conciliation
Last Friday, some 27 of the Dahshur Copts filed official police reports of the attacks and their losses. The police referred these reports to the prosecution.
The political party al-Misriyoun al-Ahrar, the Liberal Egyptians Party assigned a team of helpers to see to the needs of the displaced Copts until they are able to go back to Dahshur, restore their homes and restart their businesses. The party has also appointed a defence team to offer them legal assistance. The Copts have so far been adamantly rejecting calls by local politicians and security officials to ‘reconcile’ with the offenders. Such traditional ‘conciliation’, an out-of-court settlement frequently forced on the Copts but which more often than not grants them no compensation and penalises none of the culprits, may work in the favour of the Copts to go back home, but involves relinquishment of their legal rights.
The lawyer and member of the defence team, Nabil Gorgi said that the Dahshur case involves criminal charges that cannot be dropped after any time limitation or through conciliation.
“We were told to flee at midnight”
Watani asked a number of the displaced Copts over to the paper’s offices in Downtown Cairo and talked to them.
The 27-year-old Industrial Management graduate Ghali Barsoum Abul-Saad recalled how, since he and his family had nothing to do with the shirt dispute, they imagined they were safe. However, Saad told Watani, once Muaz died, matters took an ugly turn. “It was after midnight,” Saad said, “When our neighbours knocked at our door, woke up my 60-year-old father and told him we must flee town since the homes and businesses of Copts were under attack. We hurriedly left; my father and younger siblings went to relatives in a village in Etfeeh, while I went to a brother who lives and works in Cairo.”
Amir Mikhail Attiya, 21, said that even before Muaz died, “his brother and cousin, aided by a number of outlaws, started throwing Molotov cocktails at our house to terrorise us. Our Muslim neighbours, however, stood up to them. But once Muaz died and the mobbing started, we left the town in fear. We got to know from our neighbours that our house was robbed and fully destroyed, as were a mobile phone shop and a photo studio we own. We were also told that many other Coptic-owned houses and businesses were looted and ruined.”
“They smashed even the walls”
Sabry Saad, 46 a father of four and owner of a gold jewellery shop in Dahshur, told Watani that they had to leave town hurriedly, under protection of the security forces and promises that their homes and shops would be defended. “We left with the shirts on our backs, but got to know from our Muslim neighbours that the security forces only defended Mar-Girgis’s while our homes and businesses were broken into, looted and burned, under the noses of the police. We heard of no culprit caught.”
Saad, who fled with his family to the nearby town of Ayyat where they are now residing with relatives, said he has lost some 1.6kg of gold; his two-story home and his shop are complete ruins; and, in the looting process, lost important documents that would make it now almost impossible for him to collect debts owed to him.
Reda Naim Habashy, 33, is one of three brothers who jointly own five shops that sell car accessories and batteries. The Habashys also operate a 600sq.m. workshop for car repairs. “All our business has been ruined,” Habashy lamented. “Our life’s work and savings have evapourated into thin air. The iron gates of our workshop and stores were rammed; the equipment and goods inside were stolen. Then the assailants headed to our homes and, over two days, emptied them of all our belongings, and only left when they had done smashing even the walls and bathrooms. ”
“All for a trivial dispute”
According to Habashy, however, the worst losses have been incurred by the Erian family in Dahshur. Mansour Erian and his brothers, Habashy told Watani, have lost no less than some EGP4 million, since they own a water bottling palnt. Their warehouse was vandalised; the heavy equipment and trucks were stolen; the administrative building and freezer unit were ruined; and their homes, which housed some priceless belongings, were looted and ruined.
“What we were made to go through,” said the 35-year-old owner of a mobile phone shop Ashraf Mikhail, “is nothing short of ignominious indignity. We were deliberately humiliated; we had to flee to save our skins for no offence we had any of us committed.
“Now I am staying, together with my wife and four children, with relatives in Ayyat. They have kindly accepted to host us in our hardship, but a guest may not overstay his welcome. We do not know how will we restart normal lives. And all this for a dispute with a Coptic laundry owner who was already viciously penalised for a trivial mistake; his house and that of his brother’s were burned to the ground, and they were arrested by the police since Day One.”
WATANI International
5 August 2012