The police has announced that a young Coptic man whose beheaded and decapitated body was found in a garbage heap in Alexandria a few days ago was killed by a Muslim roommate following a dispute over money.
A garbage collector had informed the police that he saw a man get rid of the head by throwing it in a garbage bin, then go back to bring the body. He waited, he said, till the suspected killer came back and rushed to the police. The police caught the killer who confessed to his crime.
The body belonged to the 28-year-old Malak Fouad Sadeq who came from the Upper Egyptian village of Tayyiba in Minya, some 250km south of Cairo. He worked in Alexandria in a ceramics factory and at the same time studied at the Theological College. Sadeq’s family was informed of his death, came for the body and buried him in his home village.
A human rights source told Watani that Sadeq’s neighbours and friends say that his Muslim roommate killed him over a money dispute. But the killer said he had killed Sadeq because of arguments over religion; he said Sadeq tried to convert him to Christianity. The source, however, says that the killer was advised by his defence team to claim the killing had a religious backing in hope of getting a lenient sentence.
The brutal manner of the killing drove many to suspect the killer was in connection with ISIL and that the murder carried sectarian implications. But this has proved to be untrue; no Islamist organisation, ISIL or otherwise, has claimed responsibility for the killing. According to the human rights source, had ISIL been responsible it would have proudly claimed responsibility, threatened Christians with the dire fate that awaits them, and stressed that no government was capable of protecting them.
Watani International
14 December 2014