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A father alleges that Egyptian officials are abetting the kidnappers of a Christian woman.

A well-known expert on the Middle East and Islam claims that Egyptian authorities have supported the abduction and forced conversion of a Coptic Christian woman.

A widely published expert on the Middle East and Islam alleges that authorities in Egypt have assisted in the abduction and coerced religious conversion of a Coptic Christian woman.

According to Raymond Ibrahim, Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute, Irene Ibrahim Shehata, a 21-year-old medical student at Asyut National University, disappeared on Jan. 22 between mid-term exams in Asyut.

Her father reported in February that she had managed to make a desperate, tearful call to her brother before a man seized the phone and said, “Okay, you heard her voice and know she’s okay, right? Now go to hell!” before disconnecting, Ibrahim wrote in a report for rights watchdog Coptic Solidarity.

During the call, Shehata begged her brother either to rescue her or consider her dead and told him her location, according to an Egyptian source whose name is withheld.

“Her brother heard her screaming, someone was yelling at her, and then the call ended,” the source said. “It seems that she used his phone without his permission. This was a great piece of evidence that she was kidnapped.”

He said that having learned that she was in Sohaj, the family went there and reported the phone call and her location to the police.

“The police officers threatened to arrest the family if they tried to rescue her and warned them that the kidnappers were armed,” he said.

On Feb. 21, police told her family that the kidnappers had changed her location to an unknown place, the source said.

“Another way to mislead families,” he said. “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.”

While officials eventually charged an unidentified man, State Security officials have been dismissive and hostile to Shehata’s family, telling her father that she ran off with a Muslim man of her own free will, according to Ibrahim, a U.S.-born Egyptian who is fluent in Arabic.

“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” rather than travel items, he said.

State Security officials know precisely where Shehata is, the father said in an interview on social media, but refuse to act or let her family speak or meet with her, according to Ibrahim. He told State Security that he had provided the family with several false leads that led Shehata’s father and brother to travel up and down Egypt in futility.

Her family on Feb. 29 released a statement revealing that electronic records showed the religion field on her national ID had been changed to “Muslim” against her will, adding, “It is another way to force families to give up,” Ibrahim reported.

“The family also made it 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,” Ibrahim stated.

The father claims that six Christian women or girls have gone missing from their neighborhood in the past month. The family recognized the kidnappers as a well-organized terrorist organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, that targets Christian girls in the Middle East.

The difficulty of documenting countless cases of trafficked Coptic women in Egypt is one reason for the lack of action and international attention to the issue, according to Christian Solidarity’s 2020 report, “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, it noted.

“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,” the report stated. “According to a former member of one of these kidnapping rings, the abduction of such girls is now at an all-time high.”

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