WATANI International
11 January 2009
On 11 December 2008, Joseph Girgis Helmy, who goes by the name of Maged, was sentenced to one month in prison and a EGP5000 fine for impersonating a police officer and trying to uncover the niqab of the fully veiled woman Zakiya Salah in order to expose her identity.
Small town people
The ruling, which was issued by Esna court, came in the aftermath of an incident which occurred in December 2007. Maged, a young man in his twenties and the owner of a shop that sells cell phones, had received a fully veiled client who looked at a large number of cell phones but bought none of them and left. Right after she left Maged discovered a cell phone missing. He rushed out behind her in the street and asked her to return the cell phone; an argument followed and he asked her to disclose her identity and remove her niqab or face veil. The woman shouted and accused Maged of attempting to harass her. The matter escalated into a street fight; the young man was arrested and charged with assaulting a female. He was detained for one month then taken to court.
Maged’s lawyer Mahmoud Eissa insisted Maged could have never impersonated a police officer because he was not wearing a police costume or using a forged ID when he tried to get Salah to reveal her identity. Moreover, everyone in the small Upper Egyptian town of
Unprecedented
On the evening of that day back in December 2007 the incident resulted in sectarian rioting during which the Muslim townspeople attacked the church, the Coptic-owned shops and cars, torching and plundering. The usual Muslim jihadi slogans of “There is no god but Allah” and “On to jihad” filled the Upper Egyptian cold night air. The rampage continued till the wee hours of dawn.
The losses amounted to a staggering figure of some two million Egyptian Pounds, given that Egyptians normally do not have insurance or that insurance may not cover acts of civil unrest.
The “shrine of the three peasants”, a 4th-century shrine built to commemorate three Coptic Esna peasants who had been martyred during the Christian persecution in the third century, was attacked. Its domes were ruined and the crosses pulled out. When the Copts attempted to repair it two days later the antiquities inspector forbade them and insisted they obtain an official permit first.
In an unprecedented step, the victims were indemnified some three weeks later for the losses they incurred. They were handed cheques which amounted to a total value of LE1,295,000 by order of Qena governor Magdy Ayoub.