The Boston Globe
15 October 1998

EL BALYANA, Egypt - A bishop of the Coptic Church here faces charges that
carry the death penalty under government sedition laws after speaking out
against ''systemic, inhuman and unspeakable'' police abuse against
Christians in this remote region of Upper Egypt.

The five-count indictment against Bishop Wissa - as well as allegations of
torture and brutal interrogations of hundreds of Christians in a small
farming village in the Nile Delta - has triggered a national wave of anger
in recent days among the minority Coptic Christians in this overwhelmingly
Islamic nation.

"Rather than address allegations of torture, they arrested the bishop. It
is an outrage. The Christian community was already angry and now it is
furious," said the Rev. Pula Fuad, a Coptic priest from the diocese who has
been working with the families who suffered at the hands of the police.

This case has enraged Muslims and Christians alike. The story has unfolded
amid rising claims of discrimination against Christians in Egypt, where
Islamic fundamentalism has eadily taken root in many levels of society.

The Coptic Church is the native Christian church of Egypt. It traces its
roots back to St. Mark the Evangelist, and prides itself on orthodoxy.
Egypt's Coptic minority represents roughly 9 percent of the country's
population of 60 million.

Wissa's arrest last weekend brought to a boiling point tensions that
began simmering two months ago. On Aug. 14, two Christian residents of the
village of Al Kosheh, within Wissa's diocese about 35 miles north of Luxor,
were killed and their bodies dumped in the Christian
section of town.

Christian religious leaders, human rights workers and residents of the
town believe that the two men were killed by five Muslim men and have
offered evidence to substantiate their case. But the Christians say that
police have dismissed claims against the Muslims and have run
roughshod over the Christian community to frame a Christian suspect.

They accuse the police of ignoring evidence incriminating the Muslim
suspects to avoid the potential unrest that could erupt between Muslims and
Christians if Muslims were arrested.
What began as murder - not uncommon in Upper Egypt, where internecine clan
wars and honor killings abound - has stirred deep emotions over religious
differences in a town that is 30 percent Christian and 70 percent Muslim.

In the past six weeks, police have rounded up more than 1,200 Christian
residents of Al-Kosheh for questioning. Many of these allegedly included
the use of blindfolds, beatings and electric shocks. There are also reports
of victims being bound and hung from window grates inside police detention
centers. Detainees have been held for as long as two weeks without being
formally charged.

Several women interviewed by the Globe said they were verbally assaulted
and threatened with rape. They also said that two children under the age of
2 were thrown to the floor in an attempt to force testimony that their
husbands did the killings.

Wissa claims that two Christian conscripts from the Army were forced to
testify against a Christian man who now stands charged. The father of one
of the men told Wissa that the testimonies were forced and that they wanted
to retract them. When Wissa intervened and brought the issue to the
attention of Coptic Pope Shenuda III in Cairo and the office of President
Hosni Mubarak, the local police grew furious and called in Wissa for
questioning about what they termed ''obstruction of justice.'' Wissa, a
respected, 60-year-old Christian cleric who wears the traditional long
beard and black vestments of the Coptic clergy, was detained and
interrogated on Saturday and then released on bail pending a hearing. "What
happened here," Wissa said in an interview, ''was systemic, inhuman and
unspeakable ... The police have treated the people of our church as less
than human. And apparently they see me as a terrorist.
Do I look dangerous to you?''

Inside the courtyard of the Church of the Angel in Al-Kosheh, hundreds of
residents gathered Monday to make their own claims of police abuse.
Dozens held up arms and ankles that appeared raw from rope burns and
bruised limbs. They charged that the police had used an electric generator
with a hand crank to shock their ears and in some cases genitals.

A man named Moris held up his 14-month-old son, Gamel,and showed a
baseball-sized bruise on the child's lower back that he claimed was
inflicted when the police threw the child to the ground in front of his
mother.

Human rights lawyers interpret the indictment against him as trumped-up
charges presented by a regional court. It contains five counts, including
''threatening national security'' and ''spreading extremist ideas to cause
sectarian strife.''

Because the charges fall under Egypt's antiterrorism laws, lawyers for the
Coptic Church and human rights organizations said that they could carry the
death penalty. But they also hoped a higher court would dismiss them.

Government officials have not commented other than to say that they are
investigating the allegations of police abuse. Senior presidential adviser
Osama El Baz said in an interview ''What has happened in Al-Kosheh is a
local criminal matter and it does not reflect any wider problem between the
Muslims and Christians of Egypt.''

Hafez Abo-Seada, secretary general of the Egyptian Human Rights
Organization, said, ''This is a dramatic case of random arrest, torture,
and degradation of hundreds of people. We have never seen a case as
widespread and systemic as this.'' 

But Abo-Saeda said the significance of the case has less to do with
problems between Egypt's Muslims and Christians than with human rights
violations by the state.
''The violations of human rights by the police and security forces in Egypt
is a national problem,'' he said, ''not just a Christian one.''