Preface

At the beginning of the third millennium, members of the Christian church, as well as many others, celebrated throughout the world. These celebrations were conducted by the 6-10 million Coptic Christians of Egypt, the country in which Jesus and his family sought refuge shortly after his birth. However, in one already troubled village, the celebration was cut short by a brutal massacre. Over the weekend of December 31, 1999 to January 2 2000, 21 Christians were murdered in the village of Al-Kosheh, in the Governorate of Sohag in Upper Egypt, about 300 miles south of Cairo.

This was the largest massacre of Copts in Egypt in several decades. It was different from previous massacres because it was not carried out by terrorists but by mobs, including many ordinary Muslims. Furthermore, local security officials stood by passively watching as the killings took place, while some of them actually took part in attacks on Copts. Egypt's central authorities have continued to deny the religious significance of the massacre, and most of the perpetrators have gone unpunished. Al-Kosheh was the same village in which security officials had abused, including torturing, over a thousand Copts in the course of a murder investigation in August and September 1998. Since there were contradictory accounts about what had happened in the village, and since there were indications of governmental cover up, including the arrests of human rights defenders who reported on the events in Al-Kosheh, Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom sought to investigate the incident more closely.

The Center's delegation, consisting of Senior Fellow Paul Marshall and Middle East Research Director Joseph Assad, reviewed the existing materials on the massacre and, in July 2000, went to Kuwait and Egypt to interview several dozen eyewitnesses. They interviewed other witnesses in the United States and Egyptian government officials. The delegation visited Al-Kosheh to look at some of the sites of the massacre but did not conduct any interviews within the village itself to avoid contributing to tensions.

Egyptian government officials made arrangements for the delegation to meet with officials and private citizens concerned with this and other matters related to the situation of the Copts. With government assistance the delegation also met with prominent academic and human rights defender Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim while he was in prison. The Ministry of Local Development provided all documents, maps and other information related to compensation requested by the delegation, and its cooperation in this matter is commendable. The government did not grant Center requests to allow the delegation to interview officials concerned with police and security matters, which is where the major government-related abuse were reported to have occurred.

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Massacre at the Millennium

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