WATANI International
14 February 2010
The young Coptic man, 23-year-old Malak Saad from the village of Teta in the mid-Delta region of Menoufiya, was shot to death last Tuesday by a policeman. The Interior Ministry directly declared that the death was accidental, occurring while the policeman, Amin Ibrahim was cleaning his pistol. But the victim’s family insist that Saad, who is a carpenter, was killed because he was Christian, and voiced fears that the security authorities intended to depict the murder as purely accidental.
Saad’s cousin, Milad Wahba, told Watani that the killing came in the wake of months-long harassment by the Muslim villagers owing to a rumour that the Saads were planning to turn their home into a church. The Saads’ home had been used for some 15 years as a place for prayer meetings but, Wahba said, there was no intention of converting it into a church. The harassment and subsequent skirmishes led the security authorities to place the Saads’ home under guard. Ibrahim was on duty when he killed Saad.
Saad was immediately taken to Menouf public hospital but, since the bullet had landed in his heart, he was already dead then. A Coptic crowd gathered in front of the hospital protesting the killing. Menoufiya governor Samy Emara and Menoufiya bishop Anba Benyamin both visited the hospital in an attempt to calm down matters.
Wednesday saw the funeral of Saad held in Menouf. The mourners marched his coffin from Menouf to the cemetery in the village of Teta, 5km away, in a protest procession. Investigations are ongoing.
The region of Menoufiya was the scene of a horrendous crime last September when a knife wielding Muslim killed one Copt and injured two others in the town of Bagour and neighbouring villages. The case is still under investigation.
