They are accused of killing one of the Muslim raiders of the Abu Fana monastery attack a few months back. Even if they are guilty, one must wonder: What if 60 armed Copts had stormed a mosque, ransacking and defiling it, torching Korans, kidnapping a number of Imams, torturing them and forcing them to spit on the Koran while saying that Jesus is the Son of God and their personal savior? And then what if a couple of Muslims managed to kill one of the attackers? Would they be in their Christian counterparts' shoes -- jailed and tortured -- or would they be heroes?
More Coptic abuses from U.S. friend-and-ally Egypt, a nation which, while torturing these two Christian brothers, is simultaneously having a hard time allowing two Christian sisters simply be Christian.
"Two Copts wrongly detained, tortured in Egypt," from Compass Direct News, December 2:
ISTANBUL – Two Coptic Christians wrongfully arrested for killing a Muslim during the May 31 attack on Abu Fana monastery in Egypt have been tortured and sent to a detention camp so authorities could try to extract a false confession, their lawyer said.
Egyptian authorities sent brothers Refaat and Ibrahim Fawzy Abdo to El Wadi El Gadid Detention Camp near the Egypt-Sudan border on Nov. 22. A week earlier they were bailed out pending their court case – but never released – and held in a Mallawi police station until their transfer to the camp.
The brothers’ attorney, Zakary Kamal, said the timing of the murder at the monastery rules out any possibility of the two Copts having committed it.
Monks at Abu Fana say the Fawazy Abdo brothers were far from the monastery at the time of the May 31 attacks, which began at roughly 4 p.m. and continued until police arrived four hours later.
Security forces are detaining the brothers to blackmail the Coptic Church into testifying that the attack against Abu Fana monastery in Mallawi, Upper Egypt, was not religiously motivated, Kamal said.
“They want the whole issue to be seen by the public as if it were an exchange of gunfire and a criminal case that had nothing to do with persecution of Christians,” he told Compass.
At the beginning of Refaat and Ibrahim Fawzy Abdo’s captivity in June, police subjected the two men to electric shocks eight hours a day for three days to try to force them to testify that the Abu Fana monks were armed during the attack, sources said.
Oddly enough, the jihadi terrorists used these same "police" tactics -- torture -- when they raided the monastery; and it took the police four hours to arrive on the scene of the crime. Then they wonder why the police are often accused of being in cahoots with the jihadists, or simply conflated with them.
Kamal said those guilty in the attack knew the brothers were innocent but attempted to extort 5 million Egyptian pounds (US$920,000) from the Coptic church in exchange for testimony in support of the brothers during informal “reconciliation meetings.”[...]
The two men worked as building contractors on the walls of Abu Fana monastery when nearly 60 armed Muslim residents attacked it on May 31. The attack left one Muslim dead, four Christians injured, and three monks briefly kidnapped.
Ibrahim Tiqi Riad, the brother of resident monk Father Mina, was also kidnapped and remains missing. A Coptic priest who preferred to remain anonymous told Compass that they believe he may have been forcibly converted to Islam.
In the course of the violence, attackers tied two of the kidnapped monks to a palm tree, whipped and beat them, and forced them to spit on a cross and give the confession of Islam, according to a report by the Coptic Assembly of America.
Five days after the attacks, security forces arrested the Fawazy Abdo brothers, charging them with murder. Their case is pending.
The families of the two men are suffering in their absence as they were the sole breadwinners. The electricity in their families’ houses has been shut off since they can’t pay their bills, Kamal said.
The reasons behind the death of the Muslim at Abu Fana monastery remains a mystery. Police did not record the details of the killing in the investigation report of the monastery attack.
Quite possibly he was shot by his own men, as the jihadists are known to have set off a volley of shots indiscriminately.
Thanks Dhimmi Watch
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