U.S. Copts Association

Ejection from country may force Ethiopian church leader to miss his wedding.

August 25 (Compass Direct News) - Saudi Arabia deported four East African Christians last month after they were detained while leading a prayer service in Jeddah.Arrested on June 9, the church leaders were beaten and imprisoned for more than a month in torturous conditions.

Masai Wendewesen, deported to his native Ethiopia on July 16, told Compass today that the Christians were never formally notified of the charges against them.

But according to his Saudi work sponsor, the four had been jailed for “preaching to Muslims, planting churches and gathering ladies and gentlemen together for prayer,” the Ethiopian said. The Christians were working in Saudi Arabia as chauffeurs and truck drivers.

Proclaiming Christ to Muslims and building churches are forbidden in Saudi Arabia, where “apostasy” - leaving Islam - is a crime punishable by death.

Wendewesen said that after more than a month in jail, the two Ethiopians were told they had 48 hours to leave and were deported without retrieving any of their personal belongings.

“We were going to get married on September 7,” Wendewesen said, referring to his Eritrean fiancée still working in Jeddah. Their wedding chances appear bleak due to political tensions between their two countries that bar her from traveling to Ethiopia.
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BAGHDAD — Last week’s kidnapping at gunpoint of a Chaldean priest in Baghdad has sent shock waves throughout the Christian community in Iraq.

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People gather at the site of a train crash in rail station of Qalyoub, north of Cairo, Egypt, Monday, Aug. 21, 2006. Two Egyptian trains collided on Monday, killing up to 80 people and injuring twice that number in a Nile Delta town north of Cairo, a security source said.
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Muslim fanatic with criminal record admits intention to kill him and ‘all infidels

August 15 (Compass Direct News) - A Muslim ex-convict stabbed and killed a Christian cobbler northeast of Cairo in June, confessing that he had planned to murder him because he was an ‘infidel’ who had made an offhand comment that offended him.

Hossam Hafez Ahmad Attaya knifed Fouad Fawzy Tawfik on June 27 as the shoemaker was bending down to take the Muslim man’s foot measurement near his shop in Zagazig, provincial capital of Sharkeya.

“I want to kill him because he is an infidel, let me kill them all!” Attaya was heard to shout as he sunk an eight-inch blade into the Christian’s left lung and stomach, according to Tawfik’s family.

“My brother was clearly victimized for being a Christian,” Noshe Fawzy Tawfik told Compass.

Restraining Attaya from stabbing Fouad Tawfik a second time, bystanders called an ambulance. The shoemaker died minutes later from loss of blood before he could reach the hospital.
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By Guest: Sara Ghorab
In years past, the price of refusing Islam - for Copts in Egypt, anyway - included either paying the Jizia (Humiliation Tax), or dying by the sword. (Some entrepreneurial Muslims had the clever idea of collecting the tax and THEN ramming their swords into their victim’s midsection.) And, in the interest of furthering the new “Official Language of Islam,” Arabic, Copts were forced to learn this new tongue - unless they felt like having theirs ripped out.

Gruesome images, I know. But unfortunately, we’re only getting started with the horror show.

See, a young man, Hani Sarofim Nasrala Issak, who was a soldier in the Egyptian Army until very recently, has departed this earth.

Not by accident, and not in a nice way. And I would say “not by choice,” but the truth is that he, in some fashion, chose it.
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Months of harassment force Copt blogger to censor herself

Reporters Without Borders today condemned the months of harassment by the authorities in Qina (near Luxor, in central Egypt) that forced Hala Helmy Botros to close down her blog Aqbat Bela Hodood (Copts Without Borders) about the persecution of the Christian Coptic minority, and to stop writing on this subject for other websites.

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Months after mosque calls for attack on Christians, victims of riot still awaiting justice.

August 14 (Compass Direct News) - Families of five jailed Christians have lost their homes northeast of Cairo after authorities persuaded them to turn over their property in exchange for what was supposed to be the release of relatives accused of murder. Abdel Masih Awad Sayeed, 86, and four relatives in Sharkeya province have been in police custody since December 11. Officials detained the five after the death of a Muslim the previous day prompted rioting in the village of Kafr Salama Ibrahim. Medical examiners concluded that injuries to Mohammed Ahmad Abu Talib, received when he intervened on his son’s behalf in a fight with two of the Christian men, could not have caused his death, but the two Christians and three relatives are charged with “conspiracy to murder” Talib. The Christian brothers’ cousin, Milad Samy Zaki, told Compass that after the fight Talib suffered a stroke and died minutes later. Authorities proposed that the Christians pay Talib’s family 1 million Egyptian pounds (US$173,900) in compensation - half of which, the officials said, they had already paid with the destruction of their homes. The Christians subsequently signed over deeds for five of their properties on the understanding that this would fulfill their 500,000 Egyptian pound “debt” and secure their release.

After nearly four months, government has yet to report on Alexandria church stabbings.

August 9 (Compass Direct News) - Egypt has detained seven Christian men without charge since a fatal knife attack on churches here last April triggered two days of violence in the Mediterranean coastal city. Alexandrian Christians plan to sue the country’s Interior Ministry for the men’s release, as well as for compensation for Christian-owned shops and Orthodox churches that were damaged during the unrest. Hesham Azmy Iskender was among 101 Christians and Muslims who were originally detained. Over the following month, police released most of the prisoners. But they have continued to renew the imprisonment of Iskender and six other Christians, even after the prosecutor general issued orders for the release of all the detainees in May.

Local authorities in Sheikh Zied City, 15 km north of Cairo are opposed to a newly built church and have gone to extreme lengths to disrupt the official opening.

Prayers of dedication for the church were due to be held in early July at an official celebration of the church’s opening; however on that very day the authorities cut off the electricity and water to the building and even barricaded all the roads leading to the church. Each road had a deep trench dug across it with a correspondingly high bank alongside.

The congregation had decided to construct a building which looked like an office on the outside, though like a church on the inside. This decision had been reached because they were aware that it would be extremely difficult for them to get official authorisation through the correct channels.
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Egypt. Barnabas Fund has been contacted urgently by a partner in the Coptic Orthodox Church this morning with the urgent news that St Anthony’s Monastery on the Red Sea is under siege by the police at this very moment.
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