Christians Under Attack

 

In the morning of June 29, 2010, 37-years old Coptic mother Nagwa Sargios, left her home in the 10th Ramadan district of Greater Cairo, together with her daughter Marina (17 years) and twin sons Mario and

Michael (9 years), to visit her mother in hospital, where she was duefor a heart operation.

 

"My sister and her children never arrived as promised, and their mobile phones were switched off. Next day we contacted her land line, and my sister's husband said that he thought his family was with us

all the time", said Adel Sargios, her brother.

 

The Sargios family did their own investigations, and after talking with neighbors, they were certain, that his sister's Muslim neighbor and her two daughters Marwa and Asma, all wear Niqabs, (the head-to-toe Muslim veil) were behind Nagwa and her children's disappearance, with the motive of converting them to Islam. "They must have deceived and lured her and her family away" as the brother

puts it.

 

The information he collected about the Muslim neighbor who is divorced, is that she is a charlatan earning her living by claiming to practise sorcery, which Muslim women believe in its power and have

recourse to it. 

 

The police refused to issue a report as 'abduction' as they considered the Christian family to be only "missing".

 

After the incident, the Muslim neighbor and her two daughters have abandoned their flat, empty of all furnishings and belongings.

 

The Sargios family did their own investigations again, successfully tracing the whereabouts of the Niqab-clad family. The information was relayed to the state security officer who insisted on visiting them

alone. However, when he returned to the police station he told the family that the Muslim woman is innocent, and that they should look somewhere else. "This way the investigation would deal with it as a

"missing" persons case and we have to look further for another culprit," said Adel Sargios .

 

Top attorney Dr. Naguib Gobrail, president of the Egyptian Union of Human Rights Organization (EUHRO), who got involved in the case through the Sargios family, contacted state security in the presence of the family. "The officer assured me that Nagwa and her children are

with state security, and that she did not convert to Islam," he said. 

The officer also told Gobrail that the family could go and collect their daughter and her children the next day.

 

When the family went to state security, with an activist from Euhro, the officer denied having said anything of this sort to Dr. Gobrail, and denied knowing the whereabouts of the missing family.

 

According to Dr. Gobrail there have been attempts to convert Nagwa Sargios to Islam "by her veiled neighbor, but she rejected these attempt and stuck to her Christian religion," reported Copts United.

 

"To our surprise, we learnt from our sources that the abduction of my sister and her family was being planned for since two years," the brother said.

 

Adel Sargios accused the state security of delaying and lying about everything for three weeks. "I am certain that the officer is an accomplice, he is giving time to the abductors to move Nagwa and her

family somewhere far," he commented.

 

Coptic Activist Medhat Kelada, believes that the Islamization of Copts is a business which represents a permanent source of livelihood for state security officials, "Especially with the flow of funds from the rich and extremist Wahhabis who try to Islamize the Egyptian Copts with the help of some of the security service officers", he said.

 

While looking for his sister and the Niqab-clad woman in the area, "We found tens of Coptic girls abducted from 10th Ramadan district, and they even came back to live there after converting to Islam and

getting married to Muslims. Their defenseless Coptic families, who feel humiliated and infuriated, are threatened by state security not to open their mouth," Adel said.

 

The abduction and forced Islamization of Coptic girls, which has started nearly 30 years ago, is a lucrative business for Muslims, whether they are the brokers, abductors or state security officials,

who do their best to protect those involved in the crime. Price of a Coptic girl vary according to her looks and her family's social status. (http://www.aina.org/news/20090718111414.htm)

 

Magdy Khalil, political analyst and researcher in Coptic affairs believes that abduction of Coptic girls is an organized crime, carried out through an organized and pre-planned process by associations and

organizations inside Egypt with domestic and Arab funding.

 

Adel said that his older brother Ashraf has been intimidated by state security and he himself has received numerous threats on his mobile phone not to pursue the matter further or talk about the

incident in chat rooms on the internet. " I will never give up, whatever they do. My family has already lost four of its members , it does not matter if they also lose a fifth."

 

On July 19, 2010, the Coptic family filed a report with the police officially accusing the Muslim neighbor of abducting Nagwa and her three children