As a Cabinet minister denied the suspect in a train shooting had mental disturbances, prosecutors and security authorities yesterday questioned colleagues and family members of a policeman, who randomly shot dead a Copt and injured five others in Minya late on Tuesday. The fatal shooting on the Cairo-Assiut train sparked a protest by angry copts in Cairo Wednesday night. "All friends, colleague policemen and villagers in connection with Amer Abdel Zaher said he was never a hardliner and that he is not the kind of a person who targets Copts," a security official said. He added that Abdel Zaher was banned from holding a gun for some reasons. "However, this was three years ago," the official said. Abdel Zahir, who denied he had targeted Copts when he went on a shooting rampage aborad the train, has been remanded for 15 days and will stand trial in front of the Higher State Security Court 'for the crime he committed was at public opinion case'. Minister of Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Mufied Shehab denied at parliamentary session on Wednesday that the suspect had 'mental illness', ruling out any sectarian motives behind the shooting. Hundreds of Christians clashed with police in Cairo's Manshiyyet Nasser, mostly resided by Copts, on Wednesday night, blocking two main highways and injuring seven police officers in a protest against the Minya shooting incident. Police trying to disperse the crowd clashed with the protesters, who also stoned the police, wounding two senior officers and five other policemen. "Twelve protesters were arrested," the security official said. Authorities denied the shooting had any thing to do with sectarianism Christians make up a tenth of Egypt's. The attack came less than two weeks afetr a mombing outside a church in the coastal city of Alexandria leaving 23 copts dead.
