QENA: A Muslim man was condemned to death in south Egypt Sunday for the January 2010 slaying of six Copts after Christmas mass, a year before a suicide bomber killed 21 people outside a Coptic church. A Muslim policeman also died when three gunmen in a car raked worshippers emerging from mass with bullets in Nagaa Hammadi, near the southern town of Qena, on Jan. 6, 2010. The court referred Mohammed Ahmad Hossein, also known as Hamam Kammouni, to the country's top government cleric, a legal formality before the court can announce a death sentence. The Qena state security court said it would also announce verdicts against the two other Muslim suspects, Qorshi Abul Haggag and Hendawi Sayyed, on Feb. 20. All three had pleaded innocent to charges of carrying out the attack. Lawyers and reporters were promptly ushered out of the court after the brief decision was read to the three defendants, who were confined in a large black cage. Alaa Abu Zeid, a lawyer for one of the defendants, said he believed the latest attacks against Copts that raised religious tensions in the country had influenced the court's decision. “The circumstances Egypt is passing through had an effect on this decision,” he told reporters outside the courtroom. Copts clashed with police and rioted after a suicide bomber killed 21 people outside a church in the northern city of Alexandria after a New Year's Eve mass at the start of 2011. The protests died down amid appeals for calm by Muslim and Christian officials, but the peace was threatened again when an off-duty Muslim policeman killed an elderly Copt and wounded five others in a train shooting last week. Kamal Nashed, the father of one of the victims, said he welcomed the verdict, but he had hoped it would have come sooner. “The decision is fair,” he told reporters outside the courtroom. – Agence France
