In another episode of broken justice for the two Copts who are being used as scapegoats to force an unfair reconciliation settlement on the Coptic Church in connection with Arab attacks on 'Abu Fana' Monastery last May, Minya State Security arrested for the second time, Refaat Fawzi and his brother Ibrahim in spite of courts rulings to release them. They have been sent once again on 22nd February 2009 to the detention camp in the New Valley, on the borders of Sudan.
Their defense lawyer Zakari Kamal is appealing to all Human Rights Organizations to save them. He pledged to embarrass the Egyptian Government openly by attending next Wednesday Pope Shenouda’s weekly meeting in St. Mark’s Cathedral, Cairo. He intends to meet with the Pope and disclosed to the public this injustice, whatever the outcome is for him. He will also ask the Pope to intervene to stop this injustice. It is worth noting that the Pope’s weekly preaching meeting is attended every Wednesday by more than 10,000 people.
Lawyer Zakari expressed his dissatisfaction with the arbitrariness of State Security authorities which insist on detaining them, although they are innocent. "This is a clear violation of courts’ rulings. Minya Criminal Court previously ruled to release them; still they were detained, and sent to the New Valley detention camp. Also Cairo Criminal Court ruled on 15th January 2009 to release them. However, the Interior Ministry appealed this last ruling on 29th January, but the court refused the appeal and upheld the sentence to release the Coptic brothers. They were transferred from the New Valley detention camp to Minya police department to be released.
However, it was a big surprise when Minya State Security Services issued a new detention order, and the two brothers were transferred once again on Sunday 22nd February 2009 to the New Valley detention camp.
Zakeri said that the State Security persists with unjustly detaining the two brothers, although they know that they have nothing to do with the murder of one of the Muslim attackers Khalil Ibrahim during the Abu Fana Monastery incident. They also know well that the real killer is the younger son of Arab Sheikh Samir Abu Louli,the main suspect in instigating the attacks on the Monastery, based on criminal lab reports of the bullets found in the dead man’s body.
Defense lawyer Zakari commented that the State Security pushed the two Copts into this case as an ‘act of balancing’, which is a policy usually adopted by them in such sectarian incidents.
He also said that the families of the two Copts are passing by a severe financial crisis prompting some of them to sell their home furniture to maintain their children, after the families have lost their only breadwinners.
Voice of the Copts had already reported on the injustices of the security police when they subjected the two men to electric shocks for 8-hours daily over a period of three days, in order to extract from them a false testimony against the monks of the ‘Abu Fana’ Monastery that they were in possession of weapons which they used during the attacks in May. In spite of the continuous torture, the two men had refusing to testify falsely against the innocent monks.
Broken justice for Copts in Egypt http://europenews.dk/en/node/16471
Voice of the Copts November 25 2008
Comment by Voice of the Copts to defense lawyer Mr. Zakari;
Sir;
During the last several months Voice of the Copts has contacted you, offering to take up this case through one of the various law firms in Italy, France and the United States that are willing to take up this case to the international court.
Until this date we did not received any documentation from you in spite of your assurances on more than one instance that you would ship them to us.
One more time Mr. Zakari, Voice of the Copts. is inviting you to send the case documents as soon as possible in order to start up the proceedings for this case at the international level.