In another incident of abduction and forced Islamization of Egyptian Coptic minor girls, 16-year old Nermeen Mitry was abducted by a Muslim man to coerce her into converting to Islam. She was successfully recovered on the same day by her family.

Nermeen was abducted from El-Mahalla by Muslim Hossam Hamouda in conspiracy with his family.

The success of recovering the Coptic girl led to anger, revenge and assaults from the disappointed village Muslims against her family. Nearly 150 Muslims, armed with swords and clubs, physically assaulted five family members of the abducted Coptic teenager, as they drove back to their village after being forced into reconciliation with the abductor's family by State Security, compromising their right to pursue the case any further.

The police rounded up 11 Copts including the assaulted family and 14 Muslims. The police let the real attackers go free and were just arresting people randomly, said Sameh, Nermeen's uncle: We were released after 3 days except for two Copts whom the State Security held as pawns -- just in case we made any trouble they would be detained for a long time.

Nermeen Mitry was on her way to sit for an exam on May 21, 2009, when she was lured by a Muslim female friend to go home with her where she offered her spiked tea. She regained conscious hours later to find herself facing a bearded Muslim man trying to convert her to Islam, in a far away town.

When Nermeen did not return home, the Mitry family went to the police. Unable to get the police to register the case as an abduction, the family subsequently went to State Security and reported the incident, but were delayed there for hours with no progress.

Meanwhile, one of the abductor's family members contacted Nermeen's cousin Romany and told him he knew her whereabouts, and offered to accompany him to bring her back, Sameh told Coptic News: I am sure the abductor's family knew that we would have implicated them and they were afraid. We freed the girl ourselves; State Security did nothing to help.

Two incidents of abduction of Coptic girls to force them to convert to Islam took place within one week in Upper Egypt. In both cases the Egyptian security predictably played a key role in the outcome of the cases.
 

Irene Hanna Labib, 20-years old, disappeared on 7/1/2009 from Sahel Tahta, Sohag Governorate.

After carrying out their own investigations, the well to do Labib family discovered that Irene was abducted by Muslim Hisham Saad Mohamed, who works as a waiter in the IT institute where she studies.

Her brother Girgis Labib went and met with the abductor Hisham, who confessed to Irene being in his possession, said Reverend Sawires Rady pastor of St. Shenouda Church, Sahel Tahta in Sohag. The Labib family filed a report with the police and accused Hisham Mohamaed of abducting their daughter. The police detained Hisham and Irene's brother Girgis, who was subsequently released after taking a pledge not to harass Hisham.

Hisham was released three days later after promising security to bring back Irene at 8 pm of the same day, but he has subsequently disappeared. Reverend Sawires said the abductor never kept his promise and I now ask security to bring back the abducted girl as they know her whereabouts.
 

The family of 21-year old pharmacy student Rania Tawfik Asaad from Samalut, Minya Governorate, were successful in getting back their daughter, one week she disappeared on 6/27/2009; she was held by her abductor in the small village Of Taha Bosh, Nasser district, in the Beni Suef Governorate.

Rania was approached by Muslim army officer Mohamed Sayed Farag, 29 years old, who posed as a Copt called Mina who was living in Cairo. After a brief courtship, the army officer proposed to her and asked her to meet his elderly mother. According to Ayman Eid of Free Copts advocacy Rania knew the true identity of her abductor only when she arrived at a secluded house in Beni Suef.

Mohamed was also discovered to be a member of the Islamic Welfare Association, which is affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood. He asked Rania to convert to Islam and marry him, but she refused. After a great ordeal her family discovered her whereabouts and learnt that she was forced to convert to Islam by the Association and married Captain Mohamed two days after her abduction.

Her father reported the incident to security and accused the army officer of abducting his daughter. According to an eyewitness who asked to remain anonymous, the State Security had made a deal with Rania's father to bring her back on condition of dropping all changes against the army officer, as he would be subjected to trial by the armed forces and due to the negative publicity to the reputation of the Defence Ministry, in return for his daughter's safe return.


The Egyptian Al Fagr (the Dawn) independent newspaper was the first to report on the lucrative business of the 'brokers' of Islamization of Christians, in its May 19th 2008 issue, taking the city of Alexandria as an example.

Al Fagr reporter Tamer Salah-el-Din highlighted how the operation which is funded by Muslim businessmen is carried out with the collusion of State Security and Mosque sheikhs. The 'trading rates' cashed by brokers for each Christian male and female conversion to Islam, at the time of writing his report, was 7000 Egyptian pounds for the male and 6000 for the female. The rates for Coptic girls fluctuate depending on how good-looking she is and her family's social status.

Coptic Pope Shenouda III openly protested on December 17th, 1976 about this problem and in spite of the multiplicity of incidents, not one single person accused of abduction of Coptic girls was brought to justice.

Amal Estephanos, a 19 year old Catholic Copt, was abducted in broad daylight on Saturday 12th September 2009, by a Muslim to force her father to accept reconciliation with the families of the Muslim murderers of his son Amir Stephanos.

In an interview with Osama Eid of Free Copts, Estephanos said his daughter Amal was kidnapped by the unemployed worker Ibrahim Ali Negm, after she was drugged and bundled into a pickup truck, with the assistance of village strangers. She was taken to Aswan City, to be forced to convert to Islam. This abduction was witnessed by several people..

Estephanos said the State Security has pressuring him to accept taking part in a reconciliation session with the family of the murderers, which he adamantly refuses. With this abduction, they want to humiliate me, and force me to cave in to their reconciliation efforts, he told Free Copts.

He appealed to President Mubarak saying I want my daughter back. It is enough what happened to my son Amir, whose blood is not yet dry.

Reports from Hegaza village indicate that Amal is in Aswan with one of the organizations specializing in forced Islamization of Copts, and that she may have been raped.

Free Copts reported that State Security is detaining the abductor's family until the Amal has been released. This unusual State Security assistance is possibly due to the intervention of Abdel-Rady Araby, member of the Egyptian Shura (Advisory) Council. He told Free Copts on 16th September 2009 that Amal's abduction was a blow to his efforts of reconciliation between the families. He said that he had arranged for a reconciliation meeting to be held on Monday 14th September only to learn that the abduction took place just two days before.

On October 3, 2009, Egyptian State Security forces arrested a group of Christian Copts in different parts of the city in Alexandria, after severely assaulting them in front of their neighbors.

Their wives were also arrested, but because of intense objection protests by neighbors at the way they were handled and of the screams of their terrified children, they were released.

The men who were arrested are relatives of Rafaat Girges Habib, a man who helped a Coptic father free his kidnapped daughter from her Muslim husband's home. The arrests continued until Habib turned himself in to the police.

Egypt4Christ, based in Alexandria, reported that what started this incident was a telephone call on September 30 from Myrna, the only daughter of Coptic accountant Gamal Labib Hanna, in which she begged him to come and save her from her Muslim husband, Mohamad Hefnawy.

Myrna was abducted 10 months ago, forced to convert to Islam and married by a customary marriage contract by Osama Hefnawy to his son Mohammad.

The father, together with his brother, brother-in-law and Rafaat Girges Habib went to the apartment where Myrna was held, they were met by Osama Hefnawy, father of Mohamed and five other Muslims, who threatened them. A struggle ensued, and Myrna left with her father. She was taken away to an establishment dealing with abduction cases like hers, especially that it was found out that she was six months pregnant.

Osama Hefnawy immediately filed a report with the police and the State Security Headquarters. Myrna's paternal uncles were arrested and charged with abduction, together with her father. Myrna's family apartment was broken into and the shop of Rafaat Girges Habib was completely demolished by the police.

Myrna's uncles were forced to go and bring her back to the police station, where she was handed over to Osama Hefnawy.

Lawyers reported to Egypt4Christ that the arrested Copts were tortured and their clothes were smeared with blood, especially Romany, brother of Rafaat Girges Habib.

The unexplained disappearance of a Coptic priest's wife in Upper Egypt has led a sit-in staged by thousands of Copts at the Coptic Patriarchate in Cairo, to protest what they consider collusion by the state security services. There are rumors that Islamists have abducted her. They promised to continue with their sit-in until the state security divulges her whereabouts.

Nearly three thousand demonstrators, joined by clergy, protested the lack of protection for Copts by state security, chanting They abducted the wife of our priest, tomorrow they will abduct us and Where are our abducted girls or is it because they are Christians?

Police surrounded the Cathedral to prevent the demonstrators from going out to the streets.

On Monday, July 19, Father Tedaos Samaan, priest at St. Georges Church in Deir Mawas, Minya Governorate, returned home to find that his wife was missing from the previous night. He said that he was on a short visit to his parents with his toddler son, as his teacher wife Kamila Shehata was on a short placement to another school.

According to Father Tedaos, the last times he spoke to his wife was at 9.15pm when she told him that she was at home, and was on her way to overnight at her parent's home, 100 meters away. She never arrived there.

Anba Agapios, Bishop of the dioceses of Delga and Deir Mawas, deplored the treatment by officials of the state security apparatus in Minya. They told him that they have the priest's wife with them and promised to deliver her to her family within hours and then they came back and retracted their statements and their promises to him. Consequently he asked his congregations to go to Cairo and stage a sit-in at St. Mark's Cathedral, until state security acts. He appealed to Copts in all the Egyptian governorates to stand together alongside their brethren during their sit-in.

Father Tedaos said that apart from his wife, there have been five other Coptic females who were abducted from Deir Mawas in the last 50 days.

Father Tedaos appealed to President Mubarak for the return of his wife.

The Egyptian Emergency State Security Court in Qena acquitted two of the three suspects in the Christmas Eve Massacre in Nag Hammadi in January, 2010, where six Coptics, between the ages of 16 to 23, were shot and killed by Muslims in a drive-by shooting. The Copts were killed as they filed out of Church after celebrating the Coptic Christmas Eve midnight mass in Nag Hammad. A Muslim bystander was also killed and nine Copts were seriously injured.

Mohamed Ahmed Hussein was sentenced to death by the court on January 16 and the other two have now been acquitted. The defendants were charged with using force to disrupt public order and intimidate citizens, with the premeditated murder of seven people, illegal possession of fire arms, the attempted murder of nine others, and voluntarily damaging fixed and liquid assets.

Bishop Cyril, the Coptic Orthodox bishop of Nag Hammadi, said The court imposed one death sentence because one Muslim was killed, and the Egyptian judiciary wasted the blood of the six murdered Copts, who are of no value to the society. This verdict saddened all Christians worldwide because it means that the State is applying Islamic Sharia on all Christians in Egypt. He explained that according to Sharia the blood of one Muslim, victim Ayman Hisham, is paid for by the blood of one Muslim, Al-Kamouny; since one Muslim died, one Muslim got the death penalty.

Bishop Cyril said that according to the law an accomplice to a crime is on equal standing to the person who committed the crime. So where is this law and why has it been by-passed in this case and why have the two accomplices been an acquitted? He said that this verdict brought back sadness and pain to the families of the victims who expected the second suspect to have been sentenced to life imprisonment -- if not the death penalty -- and the third at least fifteen-year imprisonment, but not an acquittal. This is why we know that in Egypt the blood of a Christian is worth nothing.