Tag: Asyut

Four Copts, including child, abducted for ransom

October 5, 2016 Egypt Asyut, Children, Copts, Egypt, Kidnapping, Qena

Four Christians, including a child, on Sunday (2 Oct.) became the latest of hundreds of Egypt’s Copts to fall victim to kidnapping and extortion. Brothers Emad and Ramy Lamei, both day labourers, together with their relative Marzouq Ashamallah and his nine-year-old son Amir, were lured with the promise of a . . . Read More

Egypt: ‘suicide’ claim for third Christian conscript in nine months

March 8, 2016 Egypt Asyut, Conscripts, Copts, Egypt

Another Egyptian Christian conscript has died in suspicious circumstances. Michael Gamal, 22, was due to finish his two-year compulsory military service this May, when his family heard the shock news of his ‘suicide’. Last time his family heard from him was Feb 15. “As often, we talked over the phone. . . . Read More

Egyptian pastor ‘fine and safe’

August 16, 2013 Egypt Asyut, Egypt, Seventh-day Adventists

Reports that an Egyptian pastor was kidnapped on Thursday (Aug. 15) were false, according to The World Today, a Swedish newspaper. Nasralla Salib, pastor of a Seventh-Day Adventist church in Asyut, on Friday (Aug. 16) told the newspaper he was “fine and safe”, having been sheltered from trouble by Muslim . . . Read More

Wave of kidnappings plagues Egyptians

July 5, 2013 Egypt Asyut, Copts, Kidnapping

She was an old woman, and her leg was in pain. She held out her hand. “Please help”, she said. Magda took the woman’s hand, and led her to a waiting car. And that was the last Magda saw of her family for a week. The 19-year-old student became, on . . . Read More

Euro Court to France: Don’t deport Copt

June 17, 2013 Asylum seekers, Asyut, Copts, Egypt, France, Upper Egypt

France has decided that an Egyptian Coptic Christian man should be returned to his native country, but the European Court of Human Rights last week asked France to reconsider. AFP reports that the man, identified as M.E., arrived in France in 2007 from the Upper-Egypt governate of Assiut, and later . . . Read More

Christian’s six-year sentence upheld

April 27, 2012 Egypt Asyut, Blasphemy, Copts, Egypt, Islamic extremism, Prophet Muhammad

A judge in Upper Egypt has upheld a six-year prison sentence for a Coptic Christian wrongly convicted of “blasphemy” against Islam and inciting sectarian strife, his lawyer said. The judge in Assuit on April 5 refused to strike down a Feb. 29 sentence delivered to Makarem Diab, 49, of the . . . Read More

Court in Egypt sentences young Christian for ‘insulting Islam’

April 6, 2012 Egypt Asyut, Blasphemy, Copts, Egypt, Islamic extremism, Prophet Muhammad, Salafism

In a show of partiality to Muslims who go unprosecuted for like offenses against Christianity, a juvenile court in Egypt on Wednesday (April 4) sentenced a Coptic Christian teenager to three years in prison for allegedly insulting Islam. Gamal Abdou Massoud, 17, denies the charges. The court claimed that he . . . Read More

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