(New York) – Egyptian Christians have been
targeted in several attacks since the military’s ouster of former
President Mohamed Morsy. The authorities should urgently investigate the
attacks, hold the perpetrators to account, and determine whether the
police could have prevented or stopped the violence.
In the deadliest incident, on July 5, 2013, local residents brutally
beat to death four Christians inside their home as police and a mob of
residents surrounded the house, during a day of violence that erupted
after a Muslim was found deadin Naga Hassan, a village 10 kilometers
west of the city of Luxor in southern
Egypt.
Local residents also wounded three others and destroyed at least 24
Christian-owned properties. Witnesses and the police told Human Rights
Watch that police did not stop a 17-hour anti-Christian rampage in the
village until after the men were killed. Human Rights Watch visited
Luxor and Naga Hassan, and interviewed at least 20 witnesses to the
violence.
“Egyptian security forces should be on high alert to prevent and halt
sectarian violence in the current tense and polarized situation,” said
Nadim Houry,
acting Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Egypt’s religious
and political leaders should denounce the dangerous escalation of
sectarian attacks.”
Since Morsy’s ouster on July 3, at least six attacks on Christians
have taken place in governorates across Egypt, including Luxor, Marsa
Matrouh, Minya, North Sinai, Port Said, and Qena. In many of the
incidents, witnesses told Human Rights Watch that security forces failed
to take necessary action to prevent or stop the violence. Authorities
should hold accountable the people responsible for the sectarian
killings and attacks on houses of worship and property, and investigate
whether security forces took inadequate measures to prevent or stop the
attacks, Human Rights Watch said.
In Naga Hassan, a mob surrounded the homes of two Coptic Christians
after a Muslim was found dead and rumors spread that two Christian youth
had killed him. The mob killed four Christians and wounded others. Only
after the killings did the approximately 60 police present bring the
situation under control.
In an earlier incident, on July 3, Morsy supporters looted and burned
St. George’s Coptic Catholic church and al-Saleh church in the village
of Delga, in Minya, about 150 miles south of Cairo.The attacks injured
eight people – Christians and Muslims – a local media outlet
reported. Police and army forces did not protect St. George’s during the attack and have not been there yet, its priest said.
Christian residents of Delga told reporters that most of the
Christians in the area had fled, afraid to return home and unsure
whether their homes have been burned.
In separate incidents in North Sinai on July 5, 6, and 11, unidentified
assailants killed three Coptic Christians, including a priest,
according to a witness Human Rights Watch interviewed and to media
accounts, though it was unclear whether they were targeted because of
their religion.
Other apparent sectarian attacks on Christian churches since Morsy’s
ouster took place in Marsa Matruh on July 3, where two witnesses told
Human Rights Watch that pro-Morsy protesters attacked St. Mary’s church,
set fire to a security booth outside the church, and attacked a police
station there, stealing two police vehicles. In Port Said on July 9,
masked men attacked St. Mina’s church, according to a local
media report.
The only sectarian attack in which police appeared to have intervened
effectively was in Qena, on July 5. The police used teargas when Morsy
supporters attempted to attack a church, preventing the assailants from
inflicting damage on the building or injuring anyone inside, according
to a local
media report.
Authorities in Egypt should ensure that prosecutors promptly and
impartially investigate allegations of sectarian violence, whether the
victims are Christian or Muslim, and bring prosecutions as appropriate,
Human Rights Watch said.
The authorities should also investigate the
adequacy of the police response to sectarian violence, and police
officers who fail to act appropriately should be held to account.
Religious and political leaders should speak out against sectarian
violence. State security forces should take measures to prevent
sectarian violence, uphold the rights of religious minorities and
facilitate the safe and voluntary return of people forced to flee their
homes as a result of sectarian attacks.
“The Egyptian government should make ending sectarian violence a
priority, or risk letting this deadly problem spiral out of control,”
Houry said. “Prosecutors should thoroughly investigate and prosecute
those responsible, including security forces, if they want to show they
are capable of preventing future bloodshed.”
The Luxor Area Attack
At least 20 witnesses who spoke to Human Rights Watch agreed that
problems in Naga Hassan, a village near Luxor with a large Christian
minority, started at about 2 a.m. on July 5, when the body of Hassan
Sidqi Hefni, a 52-year-old Muslim resident of Naga Hassan, washed up on
the bank of the Nile behind a local resident’s house.
The circumstances of Hefni’s death are still unclear. Residents told
Human Rights Watch that the villagers believed two young Christian men
seen in the area where Hefny’s body washed up on the riverbank, Majdi
Iskander, 18, and Shnouda Romani, 20, were responsible for the death.
A
local resident told Human Rights Watch that he woke up at about 2 a.m.
when he heard Hefni, whom he knew, crying for help. He saw Hefni in the
river, and a person he could not identify pushing him under the water,
while another person standing on the bank looked on. He said that it was
too dark for him to see the assailants.
Angry villagers began to gather when word spread of Hefni’s death,
until the crowd swelled to between 200 and 300 people. A police officer
said he saw villagers chase Iskander and Romani and surround the house
of Iskander’s neighbor, while other villagers attacked Christians’ homes
with stones and Molotov cocktails.
Iskander tried to hide on the roof;
Romani escaped. The police officer, who was standing in front of the
house where Iskander hid, said that some villagers managed to enter the
house between 4:30 and 5 a.m. and beat and choked Iskander until they
thought he was dead.
Although 15 or 16 officers were present, they could not control the
mob, he said. The police realized that Iskander was not dead. They
wrapped him in a blanket and took him in a Central Security Forces (CSF)
vehicle to the central Luxor hospital, in order to lead the angry
residents to believe he had died, the officer said.
Iskander was immediately transferred to Assiut hospital and treated
for choking wounds and internal bleeding from the beating, according to a
hospital employee that Human Rights Watch interviewed. At about 10
a.m., two police trucks arrived in Naga Hassan as the mob began to
disperse for Friday midday prayer.
A local priest told Human Rights Watch that he was on the phone with a
police officer from the police station at the nearby township of
Daba’aya from 6 a.m. until 10 a.m. to find out what was happening. He
then went to Naga Hassan, but the clashes seemed to have stopped and he
was reassured by the presence of the two police trucks.
“I returned [to
the church] smiling,” he said, “I thought it was all over.” He said that
at about 5 p.m., Christian town residents began calling him again,
“panic-stricken,” because mobs had again begun to form and attack their
homes.
Throughout the course of the day, groups of villagers also attacked,
set fire to, and looted as many as 110 Christian-owned homes in the
area, causing severe damage to 24 of them, according to witnesses and an
official in the prosecutor’s office. Residents of a nearby village
drove by on motorcycles and shot two other Christian residents of the
area at about 5 p.m., critically wounding one, Bolis Zaky Nassim,
according to the official in the prosecutor’s office, a hospital
admissions employee, and Nassim’s son, who witnessed the shooting.
At about 5 p.m., between 300 and 500 Muslim residents of Naga Hassan
and surrounding villages began to gather and head toward Naga Hassan’s
main street. At about 8 p.m., close to 50 men broke into the home of
Habib Noshi Habib and brutally beat to death two of his brothers,
Muharib Noshi Habib, 38, and Romani Noshi Habib, 36, and Rassem Tawadros
Aqladious, 56, who were seeking safety in the house. All suffered
serious head wounds among their injuries. Other men beat to death Emil
Nassim Sarufeem, 41, and attacked his nephew, Milad Emil Nassim, 25,
seriously wounding him, as they fled from the house.
Human Rights Watch reviewed admission records at the central Luxor
Hospital which initially received the bodies and documented severe brain
injuries and skull fractures to Romani Noshi Habib, who died two hours
after being admitted; slash wounds, skull fractures, and internal
bleeding to Emil Nassim Serufeem, who died at 7 a.m. the next morning;
and severe head injuries, including open head wounds and internal
bleeding, to Milad Emil Nassim, who survived the attack. Muharib Noshi
Habib and Rassem Tawadros Aqladious were dead on arrival, according to
the records, which did not detail their injuries.
Photographs of the bodies of the four deceased viewed by Human Rights
Watch showed numerous cuts and bruises that appear to have been made by
blunt objects.
Habib, Emil Nassim’s cousin, told Human Rights Watch that he hid from
the attackers in an inner courtyard under a bathroom window:
I woke up at 6 a.m. to a lot of
commotion. I live on Kobri al-Gaban street, the main street in Naga
Hassan, next to Emil [Nassim Serupheem]. I looked outside and saw
hundreds of people running by, carrying metal pipes, shovels, and
knives. My cousin Rafit Fowaz, who lives on the water, called me and
said that people attacked his house and were attacking other Christians’
houses. After a while things calmed down, but later in the day it all
started again. I live here with Romani and Moharib, my brothers, and my
friends Rassem and Emil and his nephew, Milad, also came to hide here.
Girgis, our other brother, fled to Aswan with his children.
At about 8 p.m., [name withheld] broke into my house with two other
men [one of whom he named]. At that point Emil and Milad escaped out the
back. There were about 20 people standing in front throwing Molotov
cocktails at the house, and suddenly men were streaming in, there must
have been about 50 of them. I watched as several attacked Moharib. They
beat him on his head and body with metal pipes and shovels. I ran and
hid in the small internal courtyard, under the bathroom window. I knew
when they were finished with Moharib because I heard them say, “There is
no God but God.” I also heard someone from outside say, “Yalla, finish
it off.” Judging from his accent he wasn’t from here.
Habib said that four police officers wearing civilian clothes refused
to help the men hiding in the house to escape. “There were 13 women and
7 men in the house, and many children,” Habib said. “They took the
women and the children in the police vehicles to the church, but they
wouldn’t take us.”
Although as many as 60 police officers eventually arrived in Naga
Hassan by around 6 p.m., they did not prevent the attackers from
entering the house or bring the situation under control until after the
four men had been killed. A local police officer told Human Rights Watch
that the Luxor security directorate did not send more forces to the
scene because of a protest taking place in front of Luxor’s local
government building that day.
A senior local police officer told Human Rights Watch that they had
tried to control the mob, but without success. He said that seven or
eight high-ranking police officers and about 60 CSF officers from
Daba’aya and Luxor shot teargas and used batons against the mob
surrounding the houses, but could not control the mob until after the
four men were killed. “I didn’t know what to do,” the officer told Human
Rights Watch:
Put yourself in my position, and ask
yourself two questions. First, do you fire live fire on those people
outside? Who will be killed, the people outside or inside? Second, as a
police officer, you can’t do anything without orders. What do you do if
you don’t get an order that will allow you to take more action?
Maj. Khalid Mamdouh, Luxor’s director of security and the officer in
charge of the police and CSF deployed in Naga Hassan on July 5, told
Human Rights Watch that there was “no way” police could have controlled
the situation. “These people do these things all the time, they are
stupid people,” he said. “There was no reason for the police to take any
special measures, it’s not [the police’s] job to stop killings, we just
investigate afterward.”
Mamdouh, who said he was transferred from Cairo to the Luxor security
directorate in early July, denied any sectarian dimension to the
killings, and attributed the violence to the “savagery” of the people in
the area. “You’ll see, come back in a month and everyone will be
telling you that nothing ever happened here,” he said.
Habib said that an investigator in the Luxor prosecutor’s office
briefly visited Naga Hassan the day after the attack, and he gave him
the names of 18 men he saw participate in the attacks. One he identified
is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Habib also said he told the
prosecutor he believed police were involved in the attack, but on July
10, when the prosecutor called Habib to Luxor for another interview, the
prosecutor did not question Habib about police intervention in the
incident.
An official in the Luxor public prosecutor’s office, who declined to be
named, told Human Rights Watch that according to the reports they
received, throughout the day villagers attacked the homes of Christian
residents with stones, pipes, and Molotov cocktails, damaging 24 homes,
both early in the morning as villagers chased Iskander, and again
between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m.
The official told Human Rights Watch that they were investigating the
murders and property destruction but did not intend to investigate
security forces’ failure to contain the violence and prevent further
violence, which escalated over a 17-hour period without any effective
police intervention. He said that as of July 13, 10 people were suspects
in the killings of the 4 men, and 4 of the 10 were in detention.
Another 26 people, 12 of whom are detained pending further
investigation, are suspected of participating in looting and destroying
property in Christian-owned homes.
“Until now there is no probe into police behavior, and there won’t be,”
the prosecution official said. “We are taking decisive measures to make
sure nothing like this ever happens again, but the police were not at
fault. They saved people. If they hadn’t, the whole town would have gone
up in flames. There will not be any investigation into police failures,
because there is no need.”
Muslim residents of Naga Hassan told Human Rights Watch that the police
had failed to adequately intervene to stop clashes from escalating.
“They didn’t do anything,” said Mohamed Gilani, principal of Naga
Hassan’s elementary school. “We’ve got used to solving our own problems
here.”
Muslim residents also told Human Rights Watch that police arrested
between 45 and 50 men for the July 5 attacks, 7 of whom they held for 5
days without a detention order by prosecutors and who were then released
without charge. The Muslim residents said they did not know the basis
for the arrests of the men, and considered them to be “random.”
They alleged that police had used excessive force in carrying out
several of the arrests. Hamdi Ali Mohamed, 29, told Human Rights Watch
that police officers arrested him at 12:30 a.m. on July 6, after he got
into a verbal altercation with an officer who was playing a recording of
Quran verses over the village mosque’s loudspeaker at about 9:30 p.m.,
shortly after the four men were killed. “I told him it was provocative,
and that it wasn’t the right time,” Mohamed said. “At about 11:30 p.m.,
three officers arrested me in the street – two to hold my arms, and one
to beat me. My
gallabaya [traditional long shirt] still has blood stains on it from the beating.”
Mohamed Abdel-Mohsen, 32, told Human Rights Watch that police broke
into his house at 1:30 a.m. on July 6, while he and his two brothers,
Mahmoud, 28, and Ahmed, 31 were sleeping. He said police beat his
brothers and arrested them. “They kicked in the door, and broke all the
lights in the house, yelling insults at my brothers the whole time,”
Abdel-Mohsen said. “They handcuffed them and beat them with clubs and
shoes, then took them into the street and beat them more there.” He said
his brothers were being detained, pending investigation, in the Awameya
police station.
Another village resident who declined to be named said he saw police
officers beat Mohamed Bughdadi Rashad, 28, on the side of his head with a
gun as he arrested him.
After the attacks on July 5, many of Naga Hassan’s Christians fled the
town. Priests at a church in Daba’aya told Human Rights Watch that 40
Christian families sought refuge in the church. Of these, 10 families
are still in the church, some because their homes are destroyed and
uninhabitable, and others because they are afraid to return out of fear
of reprisals.
The Minya Area Attack
On July 3, Morsy supporters looted and burned St. George’s Coptic
Catholic church and al-Saleh church in the village of Delga, in Minya,
about 150 miles south of Cairo.The attacks injured eight people –
Christians and Muslims – a local media outlet, al-Masry al-Youm,
reported.
Father Ayoub Youssef of St. George’s church told Human Rights Watch
that on July 2, a group of Morsy supporters gathered close to the church
shouting anti-Christian slogans. “They were shouting, ‘Islamic!
Islamic! Egypt is Islamic, despite what the Christians want!’ and
‘Christians are against the revolutionaries!’” Youssef said.
The following day, Gen. Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi announced on television
the removal of Morsy from power. Al-Sissi was flanked by Egyptian
political and religious leaders including the head of the Coptic Church,
Pope Tawadros. Youssef said that immediately following al-Sissi’s
declaration,Morsy supporters attacked and looted the church and then set
it on fire:
Five minutes after the army’s statement,
and once Pope Towadros started to talk, a group of more than 500 people
attacked the three-story building. I live on the third floor. They were
chanting “Sissi, Morsy is my president!” They looted the place taking
everything in the nursery, gift shop, and library. They even took the
water pump, the lamps, the electrical wires. They completely looted the
place and then they set it ablaze.
Youssef said that later that evening he went to the police station to
file a report. When he returned home he found that his apartment above
the church had been robbed. “They took my personal belongings and my
books and everything,” he said. “And what they couldn’t take, they
vandalized. That night, they also looted the church and raided the homes
of seven or eight Copts.”
He told Human Rights Watch that one of the Coptic houses raided on July
3 was threateningly daubed with the words, “This is the house of
Talayfas,” the name of a Coptic family in Delga. Tharwat Bekhit, a local
Coptic lawyer, told Human Rights Watch that mobs also looted 12
Coptic-owned shops, including gold shops and stationery and grocery
stores.
Police and army forces did not protect the church during the attack and
have not been there yet, Youssef said, despite his repeated calls for
protection. Prosecutors have apparently not yet begun to investigate.
“The few officers who were protecting the church left as soon as the
crowds approached,” he said. “I called the police, the military, anyone I
could possibly reach, but no one has yet come to help.”
Bekhit told Human Rights Watch that the same group of people who
attacked St. George’s shot at al-Saleh Church, but that no one was
injured.
Christian residents of Delga told al-Masry al-Youm that most of the
Christians in the area had fled, afraid to return home and unsure
whether their homes have been burned.
Other Attacks on Christians
In separate incidents in North Sinai on July 5, 6, and 11, unidentified
assailants killed three Coptic Christians, though it was unclear
whether they were targeted because of their religion. Unidentified armed
men kidnapped Magdy Lamei Sama'ei, a Christian salesman of power tools
on July 5 in Sheikh Zuwaid city, near North Sinai’s border with the Gaza
Strip. On July 11, Lamei’s body was found decapitated in a graveyard in
Sheikh Zuweid after kidnappers demanded a ransom equivalent to
US$70,000.
On July 11, security sources reported the killing of another Christian
merchant, 60-year-old Magdy Habashi, abducted by unidentified gunmen on
July 6 in Sheikh Zuwaid. His decapitated body was later found in a
cemetery.
And on the afternoon of July 6 in Arish, three masked gunmen repeatedly
and fatally shot Father Mina Aboud, a Coptic priest, as he was driving
by an outdoor market.
A woman who lives in an apartment just above where the shooting occurred, told Human Rights Watch:
On July 6, at 1:30 or 2 p.m. I heard
gunshots, so I ran to the balcony to see what was happening. I saw a
white Verna car passing a gray car and blocking the way. Two masked men
got out of the [Verna] car and were shooting at the [gray] car. Another
masked man was standing by. They opened the gray car’s door and shot the
man inside, then threw him out, took his car and left. I screamed from
the balcony and people started gathering around the body. I went
downstairs and I saw him lying on the ground. [I saw where he] was shot
in the neck, chest, and leg. It all took less than 10 minutes.
Other apparent sectarian attacks on Christian churches since Morsy’s
ouster took place in Marsa Matruh in the north west of Egypt, on July 3,
where pro-Morsy protesters attack St. Mary’s church, set fire to a
security booth outside the church, and attacked a police station in
al-Dabaa, a neighborhood in Marsa Matruh, stealing two police vehicles.
In the Suez Canal city of Port Said on July 9, masked men attacked St.
Mina’s church. The police were responsive to a sectarian attack in Qena,
in southern Egypt, on July 5, intervening with teargas when Morsy
supporters attempted to attack a church, preventing the assailants from
inflicting damage on the building or injuring anyone inside.
