Tag Archives: Egyptians

Ezzat Hakim Attallah “died after being tortured with otherdetainees” in Libya’s second largest city Benghazi, NaguibGuebrayel, a Coptic Christian lawyer who heads the Egyptian Unionfor Human Rights, told AFP.Guebrayel’s claim contradicts an Egyptian Foreign Ministry officialwho said on Sunday that Attallah, who suffered from diabetes andheart ailments, had likely died of natural causes.Attallah was among five Evangelical Christian Egyptians detained inLibya for allegedly attempting to seek religious converts in thepredominantly Muslim nation.His death follows the March 1 detention of four dozen EgyptianChristians in the city.”Forty-eight Egyptian traders who worked in the Benghazimunicipal market have been arrested based on reports of suspectactivities,” a Libyan security official told the agency inBenghazi on condition of anonymity.The source said the Copts were primarily arrested for enteringLibya illegally, they also had large quantities of religious textsand paraphernalia which were not for “personal use.”The men were reportedly rounded up by a group claiming allegianceto be Ansar Sharia, the notorious Islamist militia implicated inthe death of American Ambassador Chris Stevens last September, theUK Telegraph reports.They were later handed over to a government-backed group in whatthe daily reports is a “wider purge of hundreds ofEgyptians” in the restive city.Ragaa Nagah, the wife of one of the detainees, told the paper herhusband “was afraid to tell us how he was tortured, but hecouldn’t see out of one of his eyes.”“They were standing over him and beating him while they askinghim to confess and when they were about to give him an electricshock he said, ‘Don’t do that and I will say anything you want meto say.”Four other foreigners – an Egyptian, a South African, a SouthKorean and a Swede with a US passport – were also arrested inBenghazi in mid-February on suspicion of proselytizing.  Proselytizing – which was banned under the secular regime ofMuammar Gaddafi – remains illegal in post-revolutionary Libya.Guebrayel says that Egypt’s Islamist government had done little toaid Egyptians arrested in Libya.  However, Egypt’s Foreign Ministry intervened to secure the releaseof 55 Egyptians who were also arrested on suspicion of trying toconvert Muslims to Christianity. Thirty five of them were deportedfor illegally entering the country, while 20 more were allowed tostay in Libya.Church officials say pre-revolutionary Libya had up to 100,000Christians, though their numbers have dwindled to a few thousandsince.Since the 2011 revolution that resulted in Gadhafi’s ouster andsubsequent death, the fear of Islamic extremism has rattled thecountry’s small Christian minority, most of whom areexpatriates. … Read More