American Coptic Union-ACU

Email  :americancu@hotmail.com

For Info : Contact Rafique Iscandar

 

Report on kidnap, rape, and violence against Christian women in Egypt

 

Thursday 22nd June 2006 Christian Girls Kidnapped In Egypt And Forced To Convert To Islam Open Doors asks us to pray. These are just four cases out of tens or even hundreds. We must pray! Reports of kidnappings and the forced conversion of Christian girls to Islam are common among Egypt's Coptic community. Only three months ago, Theresa Ghattas Kamal, missing since 6 January and feared kidnapped by a Muslim man, was found living with a Muslim family. Wearing the full veil, she told her brother that she had 'found the right path' - Islam. Please pray for these girls and remember the ones who go unnoticed. Name: Ingy Nagy Edwar Age: 19 Disappeared: 27 Sept 2003 Ingy (top, right) disappeared the day after her 19th birthday. She was reportedly being held against her will by a Muslim couple, near Cairo, but police showed her family an alleged signed declaration of conversion to Islam. At a hearing on the girl's case, Ingy appeared in court dressed in an Islamic veil. Her family believe she was being given drugs affecting her moods, and her brother said she had spoken of suicidal thoughts. Name: Marianna Rezk Shafik Attallah Age: 20 Disappeared: 30 May 2005 Marianna (bottom, left) left work to pick up a patient's blood sample but has not been seen since. The owner of the business next door told her fiancé that a Muslim employee of his had kidnapped the young woman. Rumours spread that she had converted to Islam, but her fiancé dismissed the claims, saying it was her close relationship with God that brought him to a deeper understanding of his own Christian faith. Name: Heba Nabil Narouz Ghali Age: 21 Disappeared: 28 September 2005 Heba (bottom, right) was last seen leaving work at a hypermarket in a suburb of Cairo. Staff said she had left as usual on the bus but later claimed she had resigned. Five days later the family received a letter stating that Heba had eloped with a Muslim man but when they contacted the man, he denied any knowledge of her whereabouts. The next day, a police source told Nabil Ghali that his daughter had converted to Islam. On 13 November, he acquired a copy of Heba's conversion certificate, dated 28 September. Name: Theresa Ghattas Kamal Age: 19 Disappeared:3 January 2006 Three weeks after she went missing, Theresa (top, left) called her family, saying she was imprisoned in a Cairo apartment facing pressure to convert to Islam. Theresa's brother eventually found her living with a Muslim family. He was allowed to visit on 23 March when he sat with her for 90 minutes. She spoke only once to say, "I have converted to Islam. I have found the right path." Theresa's family insist that she was kidnapped, but some Christian girls romanced by young Muslim men voluntarily leave their families and convert to Islam to escape poverty and unhappy family situations.  About Open Doors Open Doors supports the Persecuted Church in 45 countries around the world by: training church leaders and Christian workers; supplying Bibles and other Christian resources to Christians who either can't get a Bible or have difficulty; providing practical livelihood training and opportunities; visiting, comforting and encouraging those who are suffering; and raising awareness of the difficulties facing persecuted Christians and mobilizing prayer support throughout the western world.

This content is from the Cross Rhythms website at www.crossrhythms.co.uk © Cross Rhythms 2006.

 

Compass Direct - Egypt - Thursday February 23, 2006

Theresa Ghattass Kamal

MISSING WOMAN CONTACTS FAMILY FOR HELP

Kidnapped Christian refutes police claims that she ran away to convert to Islam.

 

 

February 23 (Compass) – Missing for over a month, a young Christian woman has telephoned her relatives and reported being imprisoned in a Cairo apartment while facing pressure to convert to Islam.

  

Last seen in the village of El-Saff 30 miles south of Cairo on January 3, Theresa Ghattass Kamal briefly contacted her aunt on January 24. She told her aunt that she had not yet succumbed to her unknown captors’ demands that she become a Muslim, her brother Sa’eed Ghattass Kamal told Compass.

  

Her phone call contradicted earlier police statements that she had converted to Islam voluntarily and did not want to see her family again. Police made the claims last month in the wake of a three-day protest by clergy and lay members of the Coptic Orthodox church.

  

Further investigation by Sa’eed Kamal revealed that no official records of his sister’s conversion existed at Cairo’s Al-Azhar Islamic center. Egyptian law requires that all conversions be registered at Al-Azhar and then validated with the security police, the State Security Investigation (SSI).

 

 

The Kamal family traced the origination point of the 19-year-old woman’s call to an apartment in Cairo’s Shubra district owned by Muslim Mostafa Mahmood Ali.

 

A local priest who asked not to be named for security reasons characterized Ali’s house as “a dangerous place, full of fundamentalists.”

 

Sa’eed Kamal and a Shubra diocesan lawyer immediately reported Ali to the Shubra branch of the SSI. When the Christian returned on January 30, police told him over a waiting room telephone that they had interrogated Ali and that he did not have the Christian woman. Police refused to meet with Sa’eed Kamal in person.

 

Disappearance

 

Originally from Wadi El-Natroun 50 miles northwest of Cairo, Theresa Kamal, 19, was living in a church-owned apartment for women in Giza and taking courses at the Secretarial Academy in old Cairo. Theresa’s father converted to Islam in 1995, and her mother died in 2003, leaving her and her four adult siblings on their own.

 

On January 3, she visited Coptic Orthodox priest Bavley William in the village of El-Saff and asked for his help in renewing her national and student identity cards. She had lost the documents while riding on a public bus.

 

William encouraged the Christian woman to return to Wadi El-Natroun to apply for her ID and gave her some money to help cover the expense. Theresa Kamal then called her brother and told him she would return home no later than the morning of January 5.

 

When his sister had not returned home by January 6, Sa’eed Kamal traveled to Giza and El-Saff to find her. Police in both cities refused to file a missing person report, telling him to return to Wadi El-Natroun to report his sister’s disappearance.

 

In a January 10 report of the Christian woman’s disappearance, Wadi El-Natroun police stated that they would first “request a report from the Bureau of Investigation about this event.”

 

Fearing continued government inaction, 150 Christians, including three Coptic Orthodox priests, began a three-day, peaceful protest on January 11 outside the village police station. Led by priest Yahnoss Kama, parish priest Botross of Wadi El-Natroun, and parish priest Bavley of Khatatba City, the local Orthodox congregation demanded the return of Theresa Kamal.

 

On the third day, SSI officer Tarek Haykal promised the protestors that Kamal would be returned to her family, and that they could meet her at his office in Demnhoor, the provincial capital of Buhayrah, on January 17. Claiming to speak on orders from Hassan Abdul Rahman, the head of the SSI in Cairo, Haykal also threatened to arrest the three priests if they did not disperse immediately.

 

But according to Sa’eed Kamal, at the January 17 meeting officer Haykal cursed and insulted him and then kicked him out of the office. Haykal then told the two Demnhoor parish priests accompanying the Christian man that Theresa had converted to Islam on the day of her disappearance and that she refused to return to her family.

 

Haykal said he would schedule a meeting between Theresa Kamal and a priest, a mandatory prerequisite for legal conversion in Egypt.

 

Upon checking conversion records at all Al-Azhar Islamic center and at Cairo and Giza security directorates, Sa’eed Kamal discovered that his sister’s supposed conversion had never taken place.

 

Police Complicity

 

Reports of kidnappings and the forced conversion of Christian girls are common among Egypt’s Coptic community. Some Christian girls romanced by young Muslim men voluntarily leave their families and convert to Islam in order to escape poverty and unhappy family situations.

 

But “there have been credible reports that government authorities have failed to sufficiently cooperate with Christian families seeking to regain custody of their daughters,” the U.S. State Department said in its latest annual International Religious Freedom Report on Egypt.

 

Without police cooperation, families find it difficult to verify the motives for each conversion. Unless the convert is under 18, the legal age for conversion, police can refuse to recover the missing woman by claiming that she does not want to see her family.

 

Kamal’s situation is unusual in that she was able to contact her family and deny reports of willful conversion. It has been easier than usual to see police complicity in this case, “because Theresa was able to tell her aunt that she is in the place where she was phoning from,” one Cairo-based lawyer commented. “But all that the officers did in response was to inform her brother that she was not there.”

 

Coptic Christians make up at least 10 percent of the Egyptian population. While it is illegal for Egypt’s Muslims to convert to Christianity, "kidnap conversions" to Islam have long been the subject of debate in the country.

In December 2004, thousands of Coptic Christians in Cairo protested when Wafaa Constantin, the wife of an Orthodox priest in Bahayrah province, supposedly converted to Islam and eloped with a Muslim man. Constantin was returned to church custody by Egyptian security forces.

 

 

 

 

From Mary Bulak ( Telephone call to ACU)

 

Mary reported that her two daughters , Marian, 13 yr. and Kristine, 15yr. when have been kidnapped 2 years ago.

            The girls kidnapped  by a Sheik who kidnapped the daughters is a neighbor to Bulak’s family, his name Ali Ibrahim Ali Katamesh, on Dec. 2003, who identified Kristine, and Marian as his own daughters and dropping off the biological father from the “Civil Records Office”, it is that simple.

            The government agency of  Civil Record Office as well as the police, made it very easy to accomplish the crime. Al-Arabia Channel hosted an Islamist Lawyer, Ahmed Sha’ban, who explain the Islamic Law in this case. He said that the girls can not be returned to their family, because Islam disallow “ Apostasy”, in addition, that Islam allow children conversion at the age of seven years old regardless of their parents religion or permission!!!!.

            He ignored the fact that Marian, and Kristin were kidnapped , rapped, and forced to marry the Muslim abductors in the first place.

            The SSI has protected the criminals, and provide a safe house for them. Recently, the mother appeared on a TV show,  begging all audience and viewers help her restore her daughters. Unfortunately, the TV show host 2 other guests ( Muslims pretend Christians) , who accused the mother's behavior, calling her a prostitute. The SSI and other government agencies know the location of the girls, and refused to help the mother to meet with them. American Coptic Union, report the case to the US Embassy in Cairo seeking the help for the mother.

           

Our past experience in similar, and such abducting crimes by Muslims perpetrators, shows that the Christian kidnapped girls appear to the public, and/or TV interviews, brainwashed and tripped out.

For example , on April 28, 2006, Al Arabia Satellite Channel has broadcast an interview with the two Christian under age victims . They appeared veiled , and introduced with their Islamic names, carrying their  new born children. Ironically, they disowned their mom, and Dad claiming that (kidnapping) is their choice to stay with their Muslim abductors

 

 

 

The following is the letter sent to USA Ambassador in Cairo_ Egypt.

Dear Sir;

 

     I am writing to you regarding the case of the two kidnapped underage Coptic Christian girls, Kristine, and Marian, and their mother Mary. Thanks to Mr. Kenna Roger at the Human Rights Department, for his time and effort interviewing the mother , and listening to her part of the crime, on Jan 24, 06. The mother called  American Coptic Union telling that she received threats against her and her youngest daughter, 11 years old, as a result of that meeting with Mr. Roger, on Feb.7, 2006. These threats includes kidnapping of her remaining young daughter, and harmful action against her personally. In addition to physical threats, some Islamic web sites raised, 2.5 million Saudi Riyal, for the two kidnapped girls, and for transferring them to Saudi Arabia along with the perpetrators. Not only this, but the government agencies and authorities has committed perjury by changing the name of Kristine, and Marian's biological father to a Muslim identity.

 

    Unfortunately, she said while crying over the phone "I was told during the meeting at the Embassy that I have no legal rights to restore, and see my daughters".                                

 

    The fact of the matter that  there is no law on the earth  prevent a mother from seeing her daughters. Despite it is a natural right for any parents to see, meet, and live with their kids, the Arab Republic of Egypt, and its Islamic Sharia Laws treated as an exception in that case.               

 

     The current status of these two kidnapped girls is  based on a crime committed by some Muslims, SSI, and government agencies, and we believed that US Embassy should not accept or recognized the current circumstances, that were imposed by force and act of criminal. As long as Islamic Sharia is against the Natural and Human Rights we should not support it. We believe that is the policy of United States.                                   

      American Coptic Union is addressing this case as a sample for 500,000 Coptic Christian girls kidnapped, and rapped by the Islamic Arab regime of Egypt, on the last 25 years. We have been working hard with USCIRF, Department of State, members from US Congress for more than ten years to set this topic as a major issue on the US foreign policy with Egypt .This is reason behind our request to get the Embassy involve in these cases.                                           

Mr. Ambassador, we would like to request the following on behalf of the mother:

  She requests the US Embassy, and the Human Rights Dep. to address this request  with the proper officials to meet and see her kidnapped daughters in regular basis. Also she is ready to accept them as they are now. We hope that the Embassy will offer all help and support for her, and we would like to have a response for that request as soon as you can. Thanks and God bless.

 

Sincerely;                                  

Rafique Iscandar                                                         

American Coptic Union –President.                                                                                        

 

 

 

 

 

POLICE OBSTRUCT SEARCH FOR MISSING CHRISTIAN WOMAN

Officials stall investigation on reported kidnapping.

September 8 (Compass) -- Three months after his 20-year-old daughter disappeared while on an errand from work, Coptic Christian Rezk Shafik Attallah remains convinced that she has been kidnapped by a former police constable.

Attallah said his daughter, Marianna Rezk Shafik Attallah, left work May 30 at the Al-Ra’ay medical laboratory in El-Fayoum, 60 miles south of Cairo, to pick up a patient’s blood sample from a residential address. Neither her family nor her fiancé have heard from her since.

When she failed to return home, her fiancé, Bishoy Hosni, went searching for her at her workplace. Mohammed Salah No’man, owner of the No’man Computer Center neighboring the Al-Ra’ay lab, told him that a Muslim employee of his, Ali Mahmoud Abdel Rasoul, had kidnapped the young woman.

Reportedly Rasoul, who had been maintaining the Al-Ra’ay laboratory computers, had previously been fired from the police force for “bad behavior.”

Police Obstuction

After hearing this, Attallah filed a report with the police on the day of his daughter’s disappearance, naming Rasoul as her suspected kidnapper. But the officials on duty refused to give him the case number.

At the same time, a State Security Investigation (SSI) officer declared that Rasoul had packed up his household goods and moved 250 miles further south to Sohag, taking Attallah’s daughter with him. But he warned the young woman’s father and fiancé to stop looking for her, declaring she had left of her own free will.

The woman’s fiancé remained skeptical. “If she went of her own free will,” Hosni told Compass, “then why didn’t she come to say that [to us]?”

Soon afterwards, rumors spread in their district of El-Fayoum that Marianna Attallah had left her Christian faith and converted to Islam. But Hosni dismissed the claims, saying that during their courtship, it had been her close relationship with God and active involvement in the church that had helped bring him to a deeper understanding of his Christian faith.

Employer Involvement in Abduction

It also became evident to him that Marianna Attallah’s employer, a Coptic woman named Ivon Asa’ad was involved somehow in the young woman’s disappearance.

A graduate of a local school of commerce, Marianna Attallah had taken a job at the lab on March 15, her meager salary of 90 Egyptian pounds ($15) per month supplementing her father’s limited income as a tailor.

But the young woman’s parents realized that something at work was disturbing her, causing her to spend long hours alone crying. So despite their financial straits to provide for her and her four siblings, they encouraged Marianna Attallah to quit her job. Relieved, she resigned on May 28. The next day Asa’ad visited her at the family’s house, offering to more than double her salary if she would return.

The offer was too good to turn down, and she returned to the lab on May 30. But when Hosni later telephoned Asa’ad, questioning the circumstances of his fiancée’s errand and disappearance, within an hour police summoned him and the young woman’s father.

“Why did you call Miss Ivon?” the SSI officer asked them. “Don’t call her again. Marianna was not kidnapped. She went of her free will.”

Cruel Joke on Desperate Father

The SSI has continued to stonewall the Attallah family’s attempts to recover their daughter. On August 11, a security officer called the father, suggesting that he buy a cell phone so that the police could contact him whenever they learned his daughter’s whereabouts.

Attallah scraped together enough money to buy the phone and gave the police his number. Soon afterwards the officer called, telling him that his daughter was in Alexandria and promising that if he went to meet her, he could bring her back home.

Burning with hope, the father traveled the 200 miles north to Alexandria, where the officer called him again. “Your daughter is across the street from you,” he was told.

Spotting a veiled woman, the father approached and tried to speak with her, but she ran away from him and got on a bus. When he followed and tried again to speak with her, other passengers thought he was harassing the woman and started beating him, finally forcing him to get off the bus.

“They are enjoying torturing that poor father,” commented a human rights activist who interviewed Attallah in late August.

Although Attallah sent faxed petitions about his daughter’s case to the interior minister, SSI headquarters in El-Fayoum and Coptic Orthodox Pope Shenoudah III, he has received no reply.

Hundreds of young Coptic women disappear and are reported kidnapped each year in Egypt, but their families’ claims are difficult to prove.

At the same time, security officials frequently prevent Christian parents from having contact or private access to their daughters once they have been located, instead leaving them in the custody of the Muslim “protector” who abducted them.

 

Alexandria, American Coptic Union Correspondent, on 7/12/2005

Hanan Saleeb, 28 years, mother of 2 children kidnapped by a veiled Muslim woman. Hanan was taken to an apartment in Alexandria, where she was rapped, tortured. A Cross Tattoo erased as part of tortured. A week latter she was found thrown in the street in a Coma. Now she is being treated.

 

Voice of Martyrs  Web Site:

Emad Kedees, a Coptic Christian was killed by Moslem terrorist during a ride in a public bus commuter in Cairo, on Nov. 19, 2000. Emad was beaten to death when he refused recite the Islamic creed. The terrorists dragged him off the bus and beat him in the daylight, and before the eyes of tens of people in the street. The Martyr was the breadwinner for his family of tens.                                                                                        

 

Moslem Teacher kidnapped a Mother and Her Daughter:

 

                A Christian family of six members destroyed by a Moslem teacher, Abdu Allah Hassan Imam, who used to give private lessons to the little son of that family. The teacher admired the mother, NADIA Tamer, 43 years old, and decided to add her to his four wives he already married. In order to achieve his dirty desire, he obtained a Fatwa from El Gamaa El Asslamya’s Sheikh to marry a wife of an infidel Christian. The Moslem perpetrators threaten the mother by killing her sons, and daughters, if she refuse to come to negotiate the matter with them. Under the fear of the threat, and the lack of protection from what is called the police, she went with her older daughter, on Dec. 17, 2000, for that meeting. There, she found everything was prepared to accomplish the crime. A group of Moslem terrorist, including the Teacher, and a Notary Marriage( Ma’ahzon) tried to force the mother to sign a marriage certificate, eventually, they signed for her, however they kept the daughter as a hostage. At the same time all the necessary documentation was prepared the marriage. The spouse reported to the police, the State Security Police, and finally to a parliament member, all of them turn him down to restore his wife for ever.

 

Another Christian Family Destroyed in Assiout:

          On Assiout – Upper Egypt, another Christian family was destroyed by Moslem terrorists, who wanted to grape a lot of land owned family. The terrorist and local police conspired to seduce the young son, who converted to Islam.  Later was killed by Moslems. The police falsly accused the father, older son, and his cousin for the murder of the young brother and Mamdouh Mikhail kamel, an attorney, sentenced for life in prison

 

Al-Ahram International Newspapers:

 Nabil Rizq-Allah, in El Gizah, sentenced to death, on April 29, 2001, for a crime never committed. His  wife was  killed by a Moslem burglar, who tried to rape her, while she was asleeping. But the Police accused him falsly for the murder of his wife, Nigmah Matthew, 39 years. Now, he is waiting for the execution. Nabil never had a fair trial.. Nabil was forced to change his testimony due to the torture, and humiliation by the police.

           

Al-Akhbar Newspaper;

 

A whole Christian family genocide by Muslim terrorist, and covered by SSI. Theresa , 13,years old kidnapped by her teacher, in Bany Swiaf. The was able to restore the little girle. Few days later, armed Muslims attack the family's house, and killed Theresa, Nadis, 12 years old brother, the mother Shafiqa, the father Shaker. The police falsly accused the brother Adley, who just return back from Jordan. July 1998.

 

From :Iman Illias Telephone call Conversation with ACU

 

In Bany Swaif, the SSI still helping Moslem terrorists persecute, rap, and even kill Coptic Christians. On 3-13-02, an Egyptian Christian woman, Iman Illias, an Attorney, 37 years old, was targeted by a Moslem Brotherhood terrorist, Mohammed Abdul Tawab. Mohammed and other Moslem terrorists intimidated Iman seeking her to convert to Islam. Last week Mohamed beat her up in the Courthouse, and promise a lesson if she is not surrender herself to him. According to Iman “ terrorists used to sent her mail and books about Islam, and threats”, “ a terrorist threat by spraying a strong acid on her face, on March, 21, 02”. Iman is a Human Rights Activist helping the kidnapped and persecuted Christian women.  She report all information to SSI looking for help, SSI overlooked her request. Bany Swaif is a place where the climate for terror is convenient. The Governor Ragab Abd Al Hamid, formerly used to be the Director of Christian Affairs at the Interior Ministry in Cairo. Ragab is considered a war criminal due to his barbaric actions against Christians. Another war criminal officer in the SSI, Hazem Kassab, SSI Director in Bany Swaif. Kassab is responsible for a number of massacres against Christians, and a mastermind for terrorism is the province of Bany Swaif. SSI plays a main role in persecuting and killing of Coptic Christians in Egypt.

           

From: Correspondent in Al-Minia

on June 2^nd. 2002, Moslem terrorists, belong to Al Gamaa Al Aslamyia, kidnapped a Christian girl, Jihan Isaac Gurgis, 17 years old.

          The perpetrator kidnapped her from her house, 57 Serry Basha Street, Al Minia. At the same time SSI once again interfere to protect terrorist, and arrested her brother who was trying to save his sister from Moslem terrorists hands,  torturing him by electric shocks. The brother forced to sign an affidavit to let her sister go with the kidnappers. 

 

Al-Kalama Center Report 2002:

“rap and kidnap rates is high in Al-Minia Provinces 1250 case each year, Cairo, 1125 case, Alexandria comes third with 1100 case yearly, and Souhag comes at the end of the list by 5 cases every year”. These statistics shows the vicious campaign against Christian women in Egypt. As part of the regime’s policy, kidnapping and rapping Christian women still a preferred action against Christians. For instance, Nirmeen Bakhit, 16 years old, from Alexandria kidnapped by a Moslem terrorist, Mohamed Ahmid, Al Halawanie. The police protect the terrorist and allow him to go away with his crime. Another case, Jacklyn Fares, 16 years old, in Al Minia province kidnapped and raped by another Moslem terrorist, Khalid Tawfiq Hussein. The police arrested her parents, and tortured them to give the kidnapper the opportunity to flee to Saudi Arabia. These kinds of atrocities never stop under Mubarak regime, and he has to pay for it. According to a Human Rights Organization based in Egypt, Al-Kalama Center.

 

A Court Case_AlFayum

June, 30, 2001 the Moslem Court of El- Fayoum will rule a very strange case, that is taking Christian Copts kids, jermine 12 years, and Iman 8 years, away from Christian mother’s custody, Fayzah Abdul Shaheed, to a Moslem orphanage. According to the Prosecutor office of El-Fayoum the kids must be in a Moslem orphanage, or (custody), because their father, who past away has converted to Islam before his death. Fayzah, the mother,  denied the conversion of her husband “ Imad, never converted to Islam, and he was a Christian believer” Fayzah said during a telephone call from Egypt to a Human Rights Activist exiled to the US a year ago.