Tag Archives: manslaughter
Pakistani police tortured pregnant Christian woman
International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that a pregnant Christian woman miscarried on July 26 after police beat her and dragged her naked through their police station in the Gujrat District of Punjab, Pakistan. Police had arrested her and a Muslim woman after their employer accused them of theft, but police did not even touch the Muslim woman, reports Dan Wooding, founder of ASSIST Ministries.
An ICC spokesperson said that the woman, Farzana Bibi, worked as a maid in the house of a wealthy Muslim. During a wedding held at the house, some jewelry was stolen from some of the landlord’s female relatives. The police were called, and when they arrived at the scene they arrested two maids: Farzana and a Muslim woman named Rehana.
Nazir Masih, Farzana’s husband, said, “Police registered a fake theft case against my wife and Rehana without any proof.”
Nazir went on to say that the police tortured his wife even though she told them she was pregnant. He told ICC, “Sub-Inspector Zulfiqar and Assistant Sub-Inspector Akhter subjected her to intense torture. They stripped off her clothes and dragged her naked around the compound of Cantonment Area Police Station in Kharian. They humiliated and tortured my wife, but did not do anything to Rehana.”
The ICC spokesperson said, “Although Farzana complained of severe pain, the police ignored her pleas and detained her for another two days. When her condition became critical, the police finally transferred her to the Tehsil Headquarters Hospital in Kharian, where she miscarried.
“Nazir filed a report with the District Police Officer in Gujrat, detailing the abuse his wife received and her miscarriage. The District Office initiated an investigation after receiving the report, withdrawing the false accusations and suspending officers Zulfiqar and Akhter.
“The authorities have pledged to punish all those responsible. Please pray that God would comfort Farzana and Nazir and that justice would be carried out. Please also call your Pakistani embassy and ask them to defend the rights of Christians.”
Jeremy Sewall, ICC’s Advocacy Director, said, “While we were not able to confirm whether Farzana was innocent of robbing her employers, it is absolutely unacceptable for police to humiliate her and abuse her so severely that she lost her child. The fact that the Muslim woman accused of the same thing was at least treated like a human being just proves again that if you are not a Muslim in Pakistan, you have no rights. The government should go beyond suspending the two officers guilty of this crime and try them for manslaughter.”
Report from the Christian Telegraph
EGYPT: TWO CLASHES SHAKE COPTIC COMMUNITY
Security forces fail to avert attacks on Christians in separate cases.
ISTANBUL, July 7 (Compass Direct News) – Separate cases of sectarian violence in two villages erupted in Egypt last week, shaking the country’s Coptic Christian community as Muslims attacked their homes and security forces imposed curfews in an effort to maintain peace.
Last Wednesday (July 1) in the village of Kafr El Barbari in Mit Ghamr, Dakahlia, north of Cairo, Muslim villagers mourning the death of 18-year-old Mohamed Ramadan Ezzat, an Al Azhar University student stabbed to death by a Coptic grocer, attacked Christian homes with stones, breaking their windows.
During post-funeral violence, 25 people were injured as hundreds of angry Muslims attacked Coptic homes. Some sources claimed that those who attacked the Christian houses were Muslims from surrounding villages. Reports varied on extent of damage to houses.
Many of the 1,000 Christian Copts who live in the village of 4,000 inhabitants fled or remained indoors out of fear that tensions may escalate. A non-profit organization that visited Kafr El Barbari on Sunday reported that it was unable to make contact with Christians.
On June 29, Ezzat had gone to the family grocery store of 50-year-old Emil Gerges to buy soft drinks. A dispute about an alleged debt Ezzat had with the store ended when Gerges’ son John, 20, stabbed the young Muslim. Ezzat died in the hospital that evening, after which his family members attacked and burned the Gerges’ store as well as two of the family apartments.
Gerges, his two sons and wife were arrested on June 29, and while his wife was released for health reasons, the men of the family remain in prison under charges of manslaughter. Security forces ordered a curfew in the village and placed a cordon around it to prohibit movement into and out of it.
Although the conflict in Kafr El Barbari was seen as a family dispute, sources say it quickly escalated into sectarian violence, heightening tensions throughout the country.
“The event could have passed as an individual fight, only there is so much tension now that if any individual fight happens between a Muslim and Christian, the whole village erupts and fights,” said Samia Sidhom, news editor of Egyptian Coptic weekly Watani.
So far there has been no official reconciliation meeting between the village’s Christians and Muslims, although leaders have met. Ezzat’s father, in a statement this week to online news agency Youm 7, said that his family has conflict only with the Gerges family and asked Christians who had fled to return to their homes. He did, however, imply that if the courts did not vindicate his son’s death, he would.
Sidhom of Watani said that overall there is an increase in sectarian tensions in the country because Islamic elements see a benefit to dissension rising.
“It destabilizes the country, and it puts security authorities at a weak point,” she said.
Other Coptic experts, however, believe that security forces have a hand in most cases of sectarian violence across the nation.
“The police are more than capable of controlling any situation if they want to,” said Ibrahim Habib, chairman of U.K.-based United Copts, of the apparent lack of control during Ezzat’s funeral. “This is deliberate I think. Some authority in the police feels that this is a time to teach Christians a lesson, to humiliate them according to sharia [Islamic law], to treat them as dhimmi, to treat them as second class citizens. If the government is serious, it is more than capable of controlling things.”
Rumors Lead to More Violence
On the heels of violence in Ezbet Boshra-East last month that left Christian villagers imprisoned and hiding in their houses on suspicion of holding a prayer meeting without permission, just five kilometers away in Ezbet Guirgis on Friday (July 3) Christians faced a similar fate.
After rumors spread among Ezbet Guirgis’s 400 Muslims that the majority Christians were planning to use a four-story building as a church, early in the morning the Muslims set fire to a warehouse adjacent to the building.
The village priest, the Rev. Saman Shehata, had applied for permission to use the building for worship last year, but authorities had rejected it.
The village’s 1,400 Coptic Christians have not used the building due to lack of official permission even though they have owned it for three years. Instead, the Christians have been using an old 35-square-meter building that has association status, allowing them to pray in it.
Shehata told Compass he believed that local police authorities who resented the application for permission to use the newer building as a church, which he filed eight months ago, spread the rumor that Copts would worship there in spite the denial of his request.
“These rumors are most likely spread by the lower ranking people from the police themselves,” Shehata said. “They incite the Muslims to show that they don’t want the building.”
The priest, who has been working in Ezbet Guirgis for 12 years, said his application for church use was rejected due to its proximity to the village’s only mosque.
The fire damaged two buildings, and Muslims also tried to burn cars belonging to the church and priest. Fire brigades arrived at the scene 90 minutes later. Shehata said that after morning prayers, when he went to file a complaint about the fires, he received a phone call informing him that Muslims were attacking Christians.
Few Christians were injured. Authorities arrested 11 Christian Copts and five Muslims in connection with the fires and ensuing violence. Security forces also placed a temporary curfew on the village of Ezbet Guirgis and are monitoring the village.
On his way to visit the Christian prisoners and to give them food today, Shehata said that security forces had detained and were trying to blame Safuat Atalla, a 28-year-old Copt, for the fires, which also destroyed some of the villagers’ stored crop harvest. Atalla used to work as the Shehata’s driver and had resigned on friendly terms after he found a better job to support his new wife and ailing parents.
Shehata, however, fears that the police may be torturing Atalla to extract a false confession that he set the fires out of anger toward the priest. Shehata said it was impossible to know how the prisoners are being treated as police have heavily supervised his visits.
“The greatest difficulty is that the prayer space is very limited, and it can only accommodate 1 percent of the Christian villagers,” said Shehata of the community’s older, smaller building. “People have to stand outside the building whenever they come for mass.”
The priest said the excuse authorities give for not allowing them to use or build a church is to maintain the village’s harmony.
“Christians are forced to pray in the street, and other villagers pass through them with their cattle, and this also leads to friction,” said Shehata. “So isn’t it better to pray within four walls than in the streets, humiliated?”
Shehata said this was the first time the two communities clashed in the village.
Priest Leaves
The case of Ezbet Guirgis is similar to that of Ezbet Boshra-East, said an Egyptian human rights expert, as in both villages violence erupted on rumors about the use of church-owned buildings.
Reconciliation meetings are expected to take place in Ezbet Guirgis soon, but the expert said it was likely that in order to maintain peace, Shehata may have to leave the village as did the Rev. Isaak Castor from Ezbet Boshra-East after last month’s clashes.
“It’s expected that Father Saman must leave, because they accepted that solution in Boshra so it will be hard to accept anything else,” said the expert.
Rumors have already started circulating that Muslims are demanding that Shehata leave.
“Father Isaac is already out of the village,” said the expert, who recently spoke with Castor. “He left before the reconciliation meeting that happened on Wednesday [July 1].”
Castor moved to Minya at the request of his superiors.
Commenting on the three cases of sectarian violence within two weeks, Habib of United Copts expressed worry about the negative role security forces have played in the events and the lack of equality for Coptic Christians seeking their rights based on the Constitution, which in theory grants them religious freedom.
“The national security force is a danger, and the police are not even-handed,” he said. “Even when it comes to court, they do not supply enough evidence, the Islamists have infiltrated the courts, and this is a bad recipe for Egypt. We are really worried about what will happen in the future to the Christians.”
Report from Compass Direct News
EGYPT: TWO CLASHES SHAKE COPTIC COMMUNITY
Security forces fail to avert attacks on Christians in separate cases.
ISTANBUL, July 7 (Compass Direct News) – Separate cases of sectarian violence in two villages erupted in Egypt last week, shaking the country’s Coptic Christian community as Muslims attacked their homes and security forces imposed curfews in an effort to maintain peace.
Last Wednesday (July 1) in the village of Kafr El Barbari in Mit Ghamr, Dakahlia, north of Cairo, Muslim villagers mourning the death of 18-year-old Mohamed Ramadan Ezzat, an Al Azhar University student stabbed to death by a Coptic grocer, attacked Christian homes with stones, breaking their windows.
During post-funeral violence, 25 people were injured as hundreds of angry Muslims attacked Coptic homes. Some sources claimed that those who attacked the Christian houses were Muslims from surrounding villages. Reports varied on extent of damage to houses.
Many of the 1,000 Christian Copts who live in the village of 4,000 inhabitants fled or remained indoors out of fear that tensions may escalate. A non-profit organization that visited Kafr El Barbari on Sunday reported that it was unable to make contact with Christians.
On June 29, Ezzat had gone to the family grocery store of 50-year-old Emil Gerges to buy soft drinks. A dispute about an alleged debt Ezzat had with the store ended when Gerges’ son John, 20, stabbed the young Muslim. Ezzat died in the hospital that evening, after which his family members attacked and burned the Gerges’ store as well as two of the family apartments.
Gerges, his two sons and wife were arrested on June 29, and while his wife was released for health reasons, the men of the family remain in prison under charges of manslaughter. Security forces ordered a curfew in the village and placed a cordon around it to prohibit movement into and out of it.
Although the conflict in Kafr El Barbari was seen as a family dispute, sources say it quickly escalated into sectarian violence, heightening tensions throughout the country.
“The event could have passed as an individual fight, only there is so much tension now that if any individual fight happens between a Muslim and Christian, the whole village erupts and fights,” said Samia Sidhom, news editor of Egyptian Coptic weekly Watani.
So far there has been no official reconciliation meeting between the village’s Christians and Muslims, although leaders have met. Ezzat’s father, in a statement this week to online news agency Youm 7, said that his family has conflict only with the Gerges family and asked Christians who had fled to return to their homes. He did, however, imply that if the courts did not vindicate his son’s death, he would.
Sidhom of Watani said that overall there is an increase in sectarian tensions in the country because Islamic elements see a benefit to dissension rising.
“It destabilizes the country, and it puts security authorities at a weak point,” she said.
Other Coptic experts, however, believe that security forces have a hand in most cases of sectarian violence across the nation.
“The police are more than capable of controlling any situation if they want to,” said Ibrahim Habib, chairman of U.K.-based United Copts, of the apparent lack of control during Ezzat’s funeral. “This is deliberate I think. Some authority in the police feels that this is a time to teach Christians a lesson, to humiliate them according to sharia [Islamic law], to treat them as dhimmi, to treat them as second class citizens. If the government is serious, it is more than capable of controlling things.”
Rumors Lead to More Violence
On the heels of violence in Ezbet Boshra-East last month that left Christian villagers imprisoned and hiding in their houses on suspicion of holding a prayer meeting without permission, just five kilometers away in Ezbet Guirgis on Friday (July 3) Christians faced a similar fate.
After rumors spread among Ezbet Guirgis’s 400 Muslims that the majority Christians were planning to use a four-story building as a church, early in the morning the Muslims set fire to a warehouse adjacent to the building.
The village priest, the Rev. Saman Shehata, had applied for permission to use the building for worship last year, but authorities had rejected it.
The village’s 1,400 Coptic Christians have not used the building due to lack of official permission even though they have owned it for three years. Instead, the Christians have been using an old 35-square-meter building that has association status, allowing them to pray in it.
Shehata told Compass he believed that local police authorities who resented the application for permission to use the newer building as a church, which he filed eight months ago, spread the rumor that Copts would worship there in spite the denial of his request.
“These rumors are most likely spread by the lower ranking people from the police themselves,” Shehata said. “They incite the Muslims to show that they don’t want the building.”
The priest, who has been working in Ezbet Guirgis for 12 years, said his application for church use was rejected due to its proximity to the village’s only mosque.
The fire damaged two buildings, and Muslims also tried to burn cars belonging to the church and priest. Fire brigades arrived at the scene 90 minutes later. Shehata said that after morning prayers, when he went to file a complaint about the fires, he received a phone call informing him that Muslims were attacking Christians.
Few Christians were injured. Authorities arrested 11 Christian Copts and five Muslims in connection with the fires and ensuing violence. Security forces also placed a temporary curfew on the village of Ezbet Guirgis and are monitoring the village.
On his way to visit the Christian prisoners and to give them food today, Shehata said that security forces had detained and were trying to blame Safuat Atalla, a 28-year-old Copt, for the fires, which also destroyed some of the villagers’ stored crop harvest. Atalla used to work as the Shehata’s driver and had resigned on friendly terms after he found a better job to support his new wife and ailing parents.
Shehata, however, fears that the police may be torturing Atalla to extract a false confession that he set the fires out of anger toward the priest. Shehata said it was impossible to know how the prisoners are being treated as police have heavily supervised his visits.
“The greatest difficulty is that the prayer space is very limited, and it can only accommodate 1 percent of the Christian villagers,” said Shehata of the community’s older, smaller building. “People have to stand outside the building whenever they come for mass.”
The priest said the excuse authorities give for not allowing them to use or build a church is to maintain the village’s harmony.
“Christians are forced to pray in the street, and other villagers pass through them with their cattle, and this also leads to friction,” said Shehata. “So isn’t it better to pray within four walls than in the streets, humiliated?”
Shehata said this was the first time the two communities clashed in the village.
Priest Leaves
The case of Ezbet Guirgis is similar to that of Ezbet Boshra-East, said an Egyptian human rights expert, as in both villages violence erupted on rumors about the use of church-owned buildings.
Reconciliation meetings are expected to take place in Ezbet Guirgis soon, but the expert said it was likely that in order to maintain peace, Shehata may have to leave the village as did the Rev. Isaak Castor from Ezbet Boshra-East after last month’s clashes.
“It’s expected that Father Saman must leave, because they accepted that solution in Boshra so it will be hard to accept anything else,” said the expert.
Rumors have already started circulating that Muslims are demanding that Shehata leave.
“Father Isaac is already out of the village,” said the expert, who recently spoke with Castor. “He left before the reconciliation meeting that happened on Wednesday [July 1].”
Castor moved to Minya at the request of his superiors.
Commenting on the three cases of sectarian violence within two weeks, Habib of United Copts expressed worry about the negative role security forces have played in the events and the lack of equality for Coptic Christians seeking their rights based on the Constitution, which in theory grants them religious freedom.
“The national security force is a danger, and the police are not even-handed,” he said. “Even when it comes to court, they do not supply enough evidence, the Islamists have infiltrated the courts, and this is a bad recipe for Egypt. We are really worried about what will happen in the future to the Christians.”
Report from Compass Direct News
EGYPT: POLICEMEN SENTENCED TO ONLY FIVE YEARS FOR KILLING
Officers convicted of manslaughter despite evidence of deliberate murder.
ISTANBUL, June 8 (Compass Direct News) – Two policemen convicted of killing a Christian in Giza, Egypt have received only a five-year prison sentence for what lawyers are calling the cold-blooded murder of a Copt who stood up for his rights.
The Giza Criminal Court sentenced the two policemen for manslaughter on May 25 for the 2007 death of Nasser Gadallah, 39. Police say he jumped out of a window in an effort to escape, but family members who were eyewitnesses said the officers beat Gadallah and pushed him out the window in intentional murder because he was a Christian who had filed a complaint against police.
The court, however, determined Gadallah died from the officers beating him, and that they did not intend to kill him.
“The court did not punish them [more severely], because from its point of view the officers didn’t kill him,” said family lawyer Nadia Tawfeeq. “They just beat him, and when they beat him he died.”
Gadallah, a plumber, was walking home from work on Aug. 3, 2007 when a police officer, Amir Sobhi, stopped him and took all the money on him, 280 Egyptian Pounds (US$50), and his mobile phone. Recognizing Sobhi because he had previously harassed him, Gadallah filed a police report against him citing the most recent and previous extortion incidents. Sobhi was suspended from duty for four days while police investigated the report.
A source said Gadallah’s wife told him not to file the complaint, saying they did not have power and would be unable to defend themselves. In Egypt, police corruption is rampant, according to local sources.
“But it is a known fact that Copts are definitely picked on more, because they are Christian,” said a source. “They are peaceful people and simply don’t know how to ask for their rights.”
After midnight, in the wee hours of Aug. 7, 2007, two cars full of police officers, along with Police Investigations Officer Ahmed Alnawawy, arrived at Gadallah’s home but found the gate of the family apartment complex locked. The five policemen broke into the neighbor’s home and beat him before they jumped over a wall into the Gadallah home complex.
After beating Gadallah’s brothers and father, the officers broke into his third-floor apartment and beat him, and two of them threw him out a window onto the street as his wife and children looked on, according to Tawfeeq.
“In their minds, he shouldn’t have complained because he was a Copt,” said Tawfeeq.
According to Gadallah’s widow, Mariam Gadallah, who saw the officers beating her husband, one of the officers said to him, “You are Coptic. You have no value.”
“The judge didn’t believe her,” said Tawfeeq of the widow’s testimony. “You know the man is a Christian, so they did not consider it murder.”
Tawfeeq confirmed that the court gave the two policemen who threw him out the window a lenient sentence because it determined that Gadallah’s cause of death was complications due to beating.
The lawyers said that Alnawawy gave the order to the officers to kill Gadallah. According to a neighbor’s account, one of the officers ran out of the building to Alnawawy saying: “We killed the guy, we killed the guy,” said Tawfeeq.
Seeing his body on the ground, neighbors attacked one of the police cars, while some of the officers in the other vehicle managed to escape.
Although most facts and witnesses point to direct orders of Alnawawy, the court freed him of complicity, said prosecuting lawyer Naguib Gobraiel.
“There were instructions from Alnawawy,” Gobraiel said. “The police can’t do anything without him.”
Mariam Gadallah, left with three children ages 2 to 8 and no viable source of income, said she was disappointed in the court’s soft sentence and the lack of compensation to the deceased’s family.
With irritation in her voice, she said, “I think the sentence is very lenient.”
Lawyers applied for an appeal to the federal attorney general last week calling for a re-classification of the killing as “willful, premeditated, and deliberate.” Gobraiel said they also plan to also file a lawsuit against the internal minister for allowing five officers to leave their post at the police station during work hours to attack Gadallah in his home.
“I see this decision as very weak and not suitable for this crime,” Gobraiel said. “This crime is a killing, not a beating.”
Report from Compass Direct News
Random Thoughts 