According to Raymond Ibrahim – a Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute – Irene, who was a medical student at Asyut National University, disappeared on the 22nd of January between mid-term exams in Asyut. She managed to call her brother on a mobile phone, pleading with him to either rescue her or consider her dead. The call was made in the city of Sohaj, so Irene’s family reported the incident to the local police station. Officers were rather hostile and dismissive, claiming that Irene had run off with a Muslim man of her own free will.

Ibrahim, born in the USA, who is fluent in Arabic, said: “The father further stressed that, if Irene had intended to run off with a Muslim man, why would she do it in between exams, while carrying medical supplies. The family also made perfectly clear that they have confirmed that a Muslim Brotherhood network – with a complicit State Security – is behind the abduction of Irene and many other Coptic girls.”

A source, whose name has been withheld for security purposes, stated: “Her brother heard her screaming, someone was yelling at her, and then the call ended. A man shouted: ‘Okay, you heard her voice and know she’s okay, right? Now go to hell!’ It seems that she used his phone without his permission. This was a great piece of evidence that she was kidnapped. The police officers threatened to arrest the family if they tried to rescue her and warned them that the kidnappers were armed, another way to mislead families. The Muslim Brotherhood Sharia Association in the Asyut Governorate, under security cover from Asyut and Sohaj cities, coordinated the kidnapping of Christian college student Irene Shehata.”

Irene’s father affirmed that the kidnappers belong to “an organized terrorist group led by the Muslim Brotherhood to kidnap Christian girls in the Middle East. Six other Christian girls or women disappeared from the area in one recent month”. 

According to a report run by Christian Solidarity called Jihad of the Womb: Trafficking of Coptic Women & Girls in Egypt, “Government officials’ assertions that the girls and women have gone willingly also block efforts to end the heinous crimes. While few cases are genuine marriages, Coptic Solidarity estimates about 500 cases within the last decade where elements of coercion were used that amount to trafficking. According to a former member of one of these kidnapping rings, the abduction of such girls is now at an all-time high. These networks are often supported by like-minded members (including high-ranking officials) of the police, national security and local administrations. Their roles include refusal to lodge official complaints by the victims’ families, falsifying police investigations, organizing the formal sessions of conversion to Islam at Al-Azhar, or harassing families into silence and acceptance of the de facto trafficking of their loved ones.”

Source: https://morningstarnews.org/