Despite the fact that the police has caught none of the 2000 Muslim villagers of Sheikh Qassem who, using bulldozers a weeks ago, demolished the two-storey house belonging to
Despite the fact that the police has caught none of the 2000 Muslim villagers of Sheikh Qassem who, using bulldozers a weeks ago, demolished the two-storey house belonging to the Copt Sharaqa Gadallah on the pretext that he intended to turn it into a church, efforts are ongoing to work a ‘conciliation’ between Gadallah and the village Muslims.
Gadallah’s lawyer Ghali Iskandar told Watani that the local security authorities have teamed up with the elders of the village of Sheikh Qassem in Abul-Matamir west of the Nile Delta, and have offered Gadallah two options. The first is that the village Muslims should rebuild his house, and the second is that they should indemnify his losses and purchase the land on which the house was built, if he preferred to leave the village. Iskandar said Gadallah was contemplating the second offer since, after the attack against him and the demolition of his house, he was reluctant to stay. However, he wished to get a fair price for the land and the house which he had just completed some two months before the attack and which included a ground floor that was to be rented out as shops and a residential first floor.
It must be noted that the village of Sheikh Qassem is home to only two Coptic families, so it made no sense in the first place that Gadallah intended to turn his house into a church.
Iskandar criticised the manner in which the police tackled the incident; after falling short of protecting Gadallah and defending his house, they neither conducted any investigation into the case nor caught any of the assailants. “Then we wonder why such attacks recur?” he said.
WATANI International
31 August 2012