Pictures purportedly of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians kidnapped in Sirte over the past two months have been published in an English-language pro-ISIL magazine entitled Dabiq showing them as if about to be executed
Pictures purportedly of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians kidnapped in Sirte over the past two months have been published in an English-language pro-ISIL magazine entitled Dabiq showing them as if about to be executed.
Last month ISIL claimed it was holding 21 Egyptian Christians.
The magazine called them, bizarrely, “Coptic crusaders” and said their capture was revenge for the alleged kidnapping by the Coptic Church of Coptic women who had converted to Islam.
Calling the abducted men “Coptic crusaders” the report says that Egyptian Christian women who converted to Islam were “tortured and murdered” by the Coptic Orthodox Church.
Wearing orange jump suits, the men are shown being forced to kneel on a beach in front of men dressed from head to toe in black and holding guns to their heads, as if ready to shot them. It is not known if that happened.
No bodies have been found and the publication itself talks of the Copts being “humiliated”, suggesting that the macabre pictures were a staged for propaganda purposes.
The Egyptian Foreign Ministry says it is investigating the fate of the men, mainly manual workers from Upper Egypt. The state-owned English-language Ahram Online cited a presidential statement saying that Egypt was closely following developments in the kidnapping of 21 Coptic Egyptians in Libya.
A special committee tasked with securing the return of the kidnapped Egyptians is “following the matter minute-by-minute, making extensive and ongoing contacts with official and non-official concerned Libyan parties in order to clarify the situation and learn the truth,” read a statement by the office of the president on Thursday.
Egypt’s foreign ministry reiterated its warning to Egyptians not to travel to Libya, and requested its countrymen residing in the neighboring country to be vigilant and stay away from high-tension areas, an official told al-Masry al-Youm.
