Kosheh file reopened

The Court of Cassation has ordered the retrial of 96 men, including 92 exonerated by a criminal court, who are suspected of involvement in some of the nation's worst incidents of sectarian violence. Nadia Abou El-Magd reports
Al-Kosheh village returned to the limelight on Monday when the Court of Cassation accepted an appeal by the prosecutor-general and quashed the Sohag Criminal Court's decision of last February to acquit 92 defendants out of a total 96 of charges relating to deadly sectarian strife that broke out on the eve of the year 2000 and continued until 2 January. The Court of Cassation ordered the retrial of all 96 defendants before another circuit of the Criminal Court.
In the clashes 20 Copts and one Muslim died. But even the four condemned defendants were found not guilty of premeditated murder.
The ruling of the Sohag Criminal Court outraged Copts who considered it far too lenient.
The strife started as a petty quarrel between a Muslim customer and a Christian shopkeeper in the Al-Kosheh village, 450 kilometres south of Cairo, whose inhabitants are predominantly Copt.
The unrest spread to two nearby villages. In addition to those killed, more than 40 were injured, and some 50 Christian homes, shops and warehouses were looted.
In March 2000, Prosecutor-General Maher Abdel-Wahid charged 135 suspects with serious offences for their roles in the violence in Al-Kosheh and nearby Dar Al-Salam.
In a statement, Abdel-Wahid said that police investigations produced enough evidence to charge the accused with incitement to violence, murder, attempted murder, robbery, possession of unlicensed weapons and damaging private and public property.
But Abdel-Wahid denied that the violence was sectarian. "The investigation did not show evidence of religious bigotry or a split in national unity," he said.
A day after the Sohag Criminal Court handed down its ruling last February, an angry Pope Shenouda III, head of the Coptic Orthodox Church, told Al- Ahram Weekly: "We reject this ruling and we are going to file an appeal."
But the prosecution was faster, contesting the sentence with the Court of Cassation, the nation's highest court.
In fact, the law says only the prosecution and the defendants have the right to appeal.
In the Criminal Court's report explaining the reasons for the judgements, presiding Judge Mohamed Afifi said that the court "had doubts concerning the accusations levelled against the defendants, and whether they were the actual perpetrators." He added that the papers submitted to the court "lacked conclusive material evidence that would satisfy the court that any of the defendants committed the crimes of which he is accused."
The prosecution, for its part, did not accept that the court had cleared 92 defendants, including 57 Muslims -- 38 of them charged with murder.
In its appeal, the prosecution argued that the Criminal Court had based its ruling on erroneous legal grounds.
Bishop Wissa, whose diocese includes Al-Kosheh, expressed cautious relief following the ruling of the Court of Cassation. "This [ruling] means that a wrong situation is being corrected," he told the Weekly in a telephone interview from Al-Ballyana Monastery, 65 kilometres from Al-Kosheh.
Bishop Wissa, who led the prayers and funeral procession for the victims, added: "We all were very frustrated because the 20 slain Copts certainly did not commit group suicide. The new ruling could be the first step toward opening a new page."
Al-Kosheh first won attention in August 1998 when two Copts were murdered there. It was rumoured at the time that after a subsequent investigation about 1,000 Copts were arrested and many were tortured.
Bishop Wissa, as well as Hafez Abu Se'eda, secretary-general of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR), who publicised the case, were briefly arrested at the time, and later released on bail.
Secular writer Kamal Zakher Moussa, a Copt, believes that "regardless of what the next ruling will be, it is very important to resort to the judiciary, which is the legal authority, to solve our problems." But he told the Weekly, "Al- Kosheh file won't be closed until the general file of Copts is opened and addressed frankly within a political, not security or religious, context."
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