ICC Note: As Egypt’s President Sisi announces solidarity with Christians and proclaims his plans to rebuild their destroyed churches, 4 teenage children are standing trial for “insulting Islam” because they made a 30 second cell-phone video that mocked ISIS.  The children made this video as a response to the horrific beheading of 21 Christians (20 of them Egyptian) that aired throughout the world.  The trial for these children has been repeatedly postponed, causing tortuous fear of unfounded Islamist retribution by the Egyptian government.  These charges display the motivations of the Egyptian governing authorities in Upper Egypt as those which view insulting of ISIS as the SAME as “insulting Islam.”  If the Arab world desires to create distinctions between ISIS and “Islam,” President Sisi and other Arab leaders must speak out against these allegations.

2/12/2016 Egypt (World Watch Monitor) – A year since members of the so-called Islamic State killed 20 Egyptian Copts and one Ghanaian in Libya, Egypt is set to judge four young Copts for alleged blasphemy. The four teenagers, aged 15 to 17, appeared in a 30-second video clip, mocking the militants’ show of Islamic piety in beheading the 21.

The video was apparently recorded by their Coptic teacher, Gad Younan. He has already been sentenced for “insulting Islam”. The teenagers’ case is pending a verdict on 25 Feb.

Younan’s first hearing took place in Minya (223km south of Cairo) on 29 Oct., 2015. The hearing had been postponed twice before. On 31 Dec., the teacher was sentenced to three years, though released on bail pending appeal.

The case against Muller Atef Edward, Bassem Amgad Hanna, Albert Ashraf Hanna and Clinton Maged Youssef has, likewise, been postponed twice before.

The video, taken while on a church trip, shows the boys mimicking Islamic rituals, with one of them signing, with his hand, a beheading of a supposed victim of jihadists.

In what appears to be a swipe at the Islamic State’s Libya atrocity, one boy is seen kneeling and crying out, “Oh Allah have mercy on us against wrongdoers! Oh Allah, protect us from Hellfire!“, while another, standing, motions to behead his kneeling colleague in front.

It’s somewhat ironic that the anticipated verdict against the Coptic teenagers might come a few days after today’s first anniversary of IS’s actual beheading of the 21 predominantly Coptic Christians in Libya.

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