CAIRO: The United States Commission On International Religious Freedom criticized the Egyptian judiciary over the ruling of an Egyptian court that acquitted an accused person of murdering an Egyptian Copt in a sectarian incident in Upper Egypt. It comes as Coptic groups abroad continue to call on Washington to step up its campaign to protect the Christian minority in the country. The US committee, a semi-governmental body submitted its recommendations to Congress and the State Department this month and said in statement on Friday that the acquittal of four Muslim men who killed a Coptic Christian in a Southern Egyptian town “is the latest example of the growing pattern of incidents that has not seen bringing the perpetrators to justice after committing acts of violence against Christians and their property.†The statement by the committee came as a response to the ruling in an Egyptian court on February 22. In the court’s decision, four people who had been charged with the murder of a Coptic citizen over the distribution of “indecent†images of Muslim girls in the area, were acquitted. The committee says this is part of the ongoing difficulties facing Christians in Egypt. Leonard Liu, Chairman of the Committee and associated with religious right-wing movements in the United States, said in a statement that “this is one of more than a dozen incidents monitored by the Committee during the last year, where Copts were targets and violence was committed against them.” Liu, who led a delegation to survey the situation of in Egypt in January, continued to say “this upsurge in violence and failure to prosecute those responsible feeds a growing climate of impunity.” He called on the Egyptian government to quickly appeal the verdict of the acquittal and bring the perpetrators to justice. The commission said it placed Egypt, since 2002, on the “watch list” as a nation that “has a serious violations of religious rights.” The commission has faced numerous accusations of targeting Arab and Muslim countries in their reports, and focus on the situation of minorities in Arab countries, and repeating the allegations of persecution against minorities, because many members are members of right-wing religious organizations in the United States. Coptic Christians in Egypt account for some 10 percent of the country’s 80 million inhabitants and often face difficulties in their daily lives, including the construction of houses of worship. BM
