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(Daily Mail) The mob converging on a church on the outskirts of Cairo were armed only with sticks and stones.
But their frenzied attack on a lone, elderly Coptic priest was merciless. Father Matthew Awad had refused to reveal the whereabouts of a Muslim woman who had converted to Christianity. For this offence, he was assaulted, suffered death threats and barely escaped with his life.
Today, he is in hiding. His entire family fear for their safety. Matthew’s son, shop owner Marco Awad, cannot set foot in public after he was arrested and tortured by Egyptian police officers sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Two of his three young children are with him in a safe house while his sister, wife and four month-old-son have fled Egypt to Britain and are now staying in Brighton.
Marco, who refused to be photographed because of the risk to his life, told The Mail on Sunday from a monastery in the desert: ‘Muslim fundamentalists are killing our priests, kidnapping our women and burning our churches. Since the 2011 revolution, Coptics like me have lived in fear of our lives. I’m being forced to live apart from my family because of my faith.’
The minority Christian group are reeling after a frightening rise in religiously-motivated attacks. Last Thursday, the decapitated body of church elder Magdy Lamay Habib, 59, was found in a graveyard, six days after he was kidnapped by extremists in northern Sanai.
And priest Father Mina Aboud Sharobeel, 39, was shot dead when Islamic gunmen opened fire as he drove home from a weekly grocery shop at a market in the town of El Arish, near the Gaza border.
Supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood are believed to have launched the attacks because they blame Coptic Orthodox Patriarch Tawadros II for backing the military’s removal of President Mohammed Morsi from power on July 3.
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