Egypt: Horrific Palm Sunday Bombings

The suicide bombings at two Egyptian churches on April 9, 2017, that killed at least 45 people are a terrifying reminder of the escalating threats facing Egypt's Christian minority, Human Rights Watch said today. Two parishioners and a pastor at one of the churches told Human Rights Watch that police protection at the church gate was inadequate and may have allowed the bomber to enter.

The attacks during Palm Sunday services in Tanta and Alexandria, claimed by the extremist group Islamic State (also known as ISIS), were the worst day of violence targeting Christians in Egypt's modern history. In response, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi declared a nationwide state of emergency, the first since security forces violently dispersed anti-government protests in 2013, killing hundreds.

"These church bombings were the savage work of extremists who have no regard for the sanctity of life," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "The deep-rooted sectarianism in many places in Egypt provides the climate where this hateful ideology can fester, but states of emergency have been the path to more abuses, not greater protection for Christian lives."

In Tanta, a city in the Nile Delta 95 kilometers north of Cairo, a man wearing concealed explosives managed to pass through a security check outside St. George's Church and detonate himself near the front pews, killing at least 28 people and wounding 77, according to media reports. In Alexandria, church security camera footage showed another bomber trying to enter St. Mark's Church through an open gate and being directed toward a metal detector guarded by police officers. When an officer stopped the man, he detonated his explosives, killing at least 17 people and wounding 48.

Pope Tawadros II, the leader of the Coptic Orthodox Church, was inside St. Mark's Church but was not harmed, according to the Interior Ministry.

Two members of St. George's Church and one of the church's pastors told Human Rights Watch that police had not taken serious steps to secure the church for Palm Sunday, though they had defused an explosive device in the street next to the church just 11 days earlier. One church member said that the police should have taken the explosive device as a sign of an impending attack.

Coptic Christians in Egypt have faced escalating threats since a December 11, 2016, ISIS suicide bombing at St. Mark's Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Cairo, which killed at least 25 people and wounded 49. At least seven Coptic Christians in North Sinai, the stronghold of Egypt's ISIS affiliate, were killed in the following months, prompting the majority of Coptic residents in al-Arish, the area's biggest town, to flee to mainland Egypt. On February 19, 2017, in a video claiming responsibility for the Cairo cathedral bombing, ISIS threatened further attacks on Christians, accusing them of being "the spearhead of the crusader project to fight God's religion in Egypt."

Coptic Christians, an estimated 10 percent of the Egyptian population, face widespread legal and social discrimination and are routinely denied high-level government and security services jobs. They have been the victims of increasing sectarian attacks since the 2011 uprising, particularly since July 2013, when the military removed Mohamed Morsy, Egypt's first freely elected president. On a number of occasions, Human Rights Watch has documented how Interior Ministry officials and prosecutors fail to conduct proper investigations or prosecutions into sectarian attacks on Coptic Christians.

In an April 10 statement, ISIS identified the two bombers as Egyptians, using the pseudonyms Abu al-Bara al-Masri and Abu Ishaq al-Masri. The group threatened further violence, describing Christians as "crusaders" and "apostates" and declaring that "the bill between us and them is very large, and they will pay it with rivers of blood from their children, with God's permission."

Hours after the attacks, Interior Minister Magdy Abd al-Ghaffar replaced two police generals responsible for security in Gharbia governorate, which includes Tanta, moving them to new assignments. The following day, al-Sisi formally decreed a three-month state of emergency, giving the armed forces responsibility for preserving security throughout the country and protecting private and public property.

On April 11, parliament voted unanimously to approve al-Sisi's decree. Under the constitution, a majority is needed for approval, and a two-thirds majority to approve any renewal.

Egypt's emergency law, which dates to 1958, gives the authorities sweeping powers to arrest, detain, try, and sentence suspects with almost no judicial review. A state of emergency was in place continuously between October 1981, after extremists assassinated President Anwar al-Sadat, and June 2012, when the government allowed it to expire more than a year after a nationwide uprising ousted longtime leader Hosni Mubarak.