Christian woman’s attackers will face justice, Egyptian president vows

Egypt’s president vowed on Monday to bring to justice members of a Muslim mob who stripped an elderly Christian woman naked and paraded her on the streets of a southern village.

The May 20 attack in the village of Karma in Minya province followed a rumour that the woman’s son had an affair with a Muslim woman. The armed Muslim mob that assaulted the 70-year-old woman also looted and torched seven Christian houses.

President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi said such attacks divide Egyptians. “We are all one and the law must take its course,” he said in comments broadcast live on local TV.

Egypt’s Coptic Christians, about 10 per cent of the country’s 90 million people, have long complained of discrimination by the Muslim majority. El-Sissi has, since taking office in 2014, amended election laws to allow more Christians into the national legislature and eased restrictions on building churches.

El-Sissi was speaking at an inauguration ceremony for a new housing project in Cairo for low-income Egyptians. The project is a substitute model for the shanty towns that ring the Egyptian capital, Cairo.