WATANI International
7 September 2009
On Thursday 27 August, sectarian violence erupted in the neighbourhood of al-Qawmiya al-Arabiya in the Warraq district in Giza. The conflict started as an individual dispute between a Copt and a Muslim, which then escalated into a full-scale fight between the Copts and Muslims in the neighbourhood. The three Copts, Girgis Awad, Awad Nekheila, and Mounir Abdel-Malak, were injured. A large Muslim mob then surrounded the Copts’ houses for some three hours shouting and threatening, armed with knives, sticks and stones. The Copts tried contacting the police but no-one answered.
Watani received a terrified call from one of the besieged Copts calling for someone to come to their rescue, especially that the police was not answering their calls. Watani contacted an official from State Security who, despite being outside the country, got in touch with Warraq police station. This effectively got the police moving; a police force headed to the scene of the trouble but the offenders quickly ran away once they were warned by friends that the police were approaching. Watani also contacted Eid Zaki, who is MP for Giza, who hastened to the scene and later attended the questioning of the detainees by the police.
“The police arrived too late, when the criminals had already run away, and then they detained the victims,” Awad Shaker, a pharmacist and member of the Coptic clan whose houses were besieged by the Muslim mob told Watani. They detained six Copts including his Shaker’s Wedad Awad, 40, his pregnant sister-in-law Sumaya Awad, 30, his brother Nagy Shaker, 35, who had undergone surgery in the vertebral column a month ago and was recuperating. Atef Ibrahim, Ayoub Esterod, were also detained, as was and Awad Nekheila who is 70, a diabetic, and had been injured in the head during the riots. Two Muslim women related to the escaped assailants—identified by the victims as the four brother al-Sayed, Amr, Karam, and Ahmed al-Sayed—were also detained.
The two families are known in the neighbourhood to have squabbled before, mostly over trivial matters.
On Friday a reconciliation session was arranged by the security officials and local politicians for the two families in Warraq police station. Later all the detainees were released, including four Copts were released and a Muslim woman. Three women, two Copts and a Muslim, had been released two hours after their arrest.
“We had to ‘reconcile’ in order for our relatives to be set free,” the elders of the Coptic family said.
