Nagi A. Kheir, Spokesman 
The American Coptic Association 
Member of the International Coptic Congress 
Director of Middle East Affairs, Advocates International 
9691D Main Street, Fairfax Virginia 22031 
Phone (703) 764-0011 & Fax (703) 764-0077

June 27, 2001

Urgent Press Release

 A call for immediate intervention of the international community

The Coptic Christians in Egypt need your help

For the past ten days, the Coptic Christians inside Egypt have been exposed to a wave of unusual humiliation and direct insult to their Christian faith. It all began when an Egyptian newspaper splashed naked pictures of a bearded man in bed with a woman under headlines which screamed that one of Egypt's most venerated monasteries had turned into a brothel. As a result thousands of Coptic Christians had staged demonstrations to protest against the newspaper.

Egypt’s on-line Cairo Times magazine described the story as follows:

‘The 17 June edition of the somewhat less-than-respectable weekly Al Nabaa sported a front-page headline proclaiming "The Muharaq monastery in Assuit is transformed into a house of prostitution at the hands of a senior monk."

 The lurid headline was accompanied by two pages of even more lurid photos showing a portly bearded man, identified as monk Barsoum Al Muharaqi in bed with an unidentified woman. The accompanying article described Muhariqi (real name Adel Sa’d Allah Gabriel) as a sexual predator who had used the influence as a religious authority figure to prey on helpless women. Gabriel’s perversion of his religious duties, Al Nabaa stated, even extended to having sexual trysts on the monastery altar.

 The pictures, the article claimed, came from a videotape Gabriel made inside the monastery itself and then used to blackmail his married sex partner. The tape was seized by security forces after the woman reported Gabriel’s blackmail attempts to the police. The article, however, doesn’t explain just how the tape made it from the police into the hands of Al Nabaa.’

 The Al Nabaa article makes further claims: that the head monk at the Muharaq monastery not only knew about Gabriel’s actions, but engaged in coercive sexual practices himself among some of the junior monks. It failed to mention that the monk had been defrocked five years ago.

 On June 23, 2001, an Associated Press report stated that: 

‘ “It's simply impossible,” the monastery's brothers say, “that a fellow monk could have walked in with a woman - much less a stream of women over 12 years - to have sex by the altar in one of Egypt's most revered Christian sites.”

 “There is no place or opportunity for him to have done this here. This is a well-guarded place and there are always people around you wherever you are,'' said Taraous al-Mahraki, a monk at the monastery outside Assuit, 180 miles south of Cairo.’

 Pope Shenouda III, the head of Egypt's Coptic Church, announced that the monk in question was excommunicated five years ago. Gabriel was a monk at the monastery from 1984 until 1996.

            It is important to note that the Egyptian government controls any newspaper printed and published in Egypt, such as Al-Nabaa. In Egypt, nothing is published, especially such a scandal, without the knowledge, blessing, and approval of the government. 

 The following facts attest to the Egyptian government’s sanctioning of this scandal:

A.     The Chief Consultant to the Al-Nabaa newspaper is Pilot Salah Mubarak, President Mubarak’s brother.

B.     One of Egypt’s leading newspapers said that Mr. Mahran, Al-Nabaa’s editor-in-chief, has stated that he enjoys a close personal relationship with President Mubarak (his absence from the trial Sunday, June 24, 2001, proves his claim).

 The article has set off a rare series of demonstrations by thousands of angry Coptic Christians in several cities. Scores of demonstrating Copts were injured by police forces. In the past, tensions with their majority Muslim compatriots have led to bloody clashes.

 The Cairo Times stated the following: “Although it’s unclear just how Al Nabaa obtained the video (and flat-out bribery is as likely a possibility as anything) the consensus among the protestors was that the leak had been authorized by the higher echelons of state security.”

 The court's decision to free the editor-in-chief of the Al-Nabaa newspaper on bail of about $2,570 has worsened the demonstrators’ clashes with the police. In response to the outraged Christian minority, Egypt has temporarily shut down the newspaper.

 Many of the Egyptian newspapers and most of the intellectual Muslims and Christians inside Egypt believe in the following:

I.                    The Egyptian government performed the videotaping.

II.                 The published pictures of Gabriel came from a video filmed not in the monastery, but in a home.

III.               The Egyptian government is the one that handed the videotape to the Al-Nabaa newspaper.

IV.              The ex-monk is jailed in the custody of the Egyptian security forces.

V.                 The Egyptian government is purposely side track the public (outside and inside Egypt) from the focusing on solving the intensifying persecution of the Coptic Christians in their own homeland, by directing the world’s attention on such filthy sex scandal.

 As a result of this fabricated sex scandal, the following is happening in Egypt now:

1.       Thousands of Coptic Christians have staged to protest against the newspaper. Tens have been taken into the custody of the Egyptian police.

2.       Copies of the Al-Nabaa newspaper article are being distributed in many work places to insult and humiliate the Coptic Christians.

3.       Muslims started harassing many Coptic Christian young women in the streets and as they enter the churches. They are being asked if they were going to visit the Monk!

4.       The majority of the Coptic Christians are living in intensifying fear. The fear of not knowing what will hit them next?

We call on the United States Government, the United States Congress, the United Nations, and, the International human rights organizations all over the world to immediately intervene to:

A.     Put an end to the humiliation that the Coptic Christians face all over Egypt.

B.     Secure the release the Coptic Christians taken into custody by the Egyptian police force.

C.     Ensure that there will be a fair trial. Not like the recent fake and unjust trials of Kosheh and Dr. Saad El-Din Ibrahim.

D.     Solve the problems that the Coptic Christians face inside Egypt.

 Unless peace, respect, civility, decency, dignity and true religious freedom return to Egypt, this could be the beginning of an extremely painful, violent, and bloody period in the Egyptian history. If not resolved immediately, the situation can turn into a Muslim-Christian civil war, similar to what happened in Lebanon just few years ago.

 It is possible to predict that this tragedy will have its impact on Egypt’s tourism industry, as many Westerners will fear travelling there.

 Ignoring the issue of the persecution of the Copts will hurt Egypt’s international image and effectiveness.  Without true internal peace, Egypt can not play any effective part in brokering peace between its neighbors.

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