Thursday, January 5, 2012

Egypt church bombing one year later - still no answers

A New Year's suicide bombing on a New Year's Eve Mass in the Saints Church in Egypt's Mediterranean coastal city of Alexandria left 21 dead as the church was targeted. (Read more here as the riots took place right afterwards)

Now Amira Maurice, a 28-year-old pharmacist, is in Germany undergoing the surgeries to save her leg and deal with her burns. Her fiance was killed that dead and her story was reported by the Associated Press.
Another New Year's has passed since, and there are still no answers in Egypt's most dramatic anti-Christian attack. The investigation was halted 11 months ago and never picked up again. The only suspects ever detained were released, and it's not clear they had any role in it. No new suspects have ever been named. 
"Nothing. Nothing at all has happened with the investigation," said Maurice's father, Nabil Roman. "It is ridiculous." 
Roman suspects that the Interior Ministry, which is in charge of the police, is dragging its feet in going after the case, but he doesn't know why. 
"Something is not clear. All I can say is that God will deal with them," Roman said.
The attacks in Alexandria was soon lost in the news cycle as protests against Hosni Mubarak became headlines from the region. The police who failed during the Mubarak era of thirty years, are even worse after his collapse. (Fear is that it will get even worse for the Coptic Christians in Egypt - more here)

As noted in the AP report:
Police were notorious for doing little investigation of crimes — instead, their modus operandi was usually to detain possible suspects and torture them into confessions, rights groups and former police officials say. After the fall of Mubarak's regime, the police have been in disarray and resisting reform in their ranks.
Meanwhile a bomb ripped through a church that day, changing and ruining and taking lives.
One year later all they have left is their faith...in God, not their country.

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