Christians in Libya, Egypt arrested and tortured, Sherif Ramses identified
Arrests continue of Christians accused of “proselytizing” in Libya, with a total of seven now known to be in custody including one reported to have been tortured, sources said.
The Christian Post details the reports of four Christians arrested in Benghazi on February 10 accused of proselytizing. Libya’s Preventative Security Unit arrested the Egyptian, South African, Korean and dual Swedish-American Christians, who have yet to be officially charged.
photo Wset10
On Feb. 13, Preventative Security officers picked up two more Egyptian Christians, and another Egyptian Christian was arrested by Feb. 16, sources said.
All the detainees were being held in Benghazi. It was unclear what led to their arrests.
Preventative Security spokesman Hussein Bin Hmeid said in a statement to Reuters that the four Christians originally arrested were printing books calling for conversion to Christianity. He said the country is 100 percent Muslim and that proselytizing “affects our national security.”
Only one of the four arrested on Feb. 10, Sherif Ramses of Egypt, has been publicly identified. When Ramses was arrested, he allegedly had 30,000 Bibles in storage, a figure that Libyan police inflated to 45,000 in published statements, sources said.
Sources close to the arrests told Morning Star News that Ramses has been tortured, saying he was severely bruised.
Several other sources independently told Morning Star News that Preventative Security was able to get the names of other Christians in Libya from Ramses, possibly by accessing information on his cell phone.
Another wave of arrests was said to have taken place on Sunday (Feb. 17) in Tripoli. Sources in Libya reported to contacts in Egypt that no one has been able to contact these detainees, learn their location or even get an estimate of the number of those said to be arrested.
“They say it was a large group,” a source in Cairo receiving updates from Libya said. “They were supposed to be released, but there has been no word.”
There has been no information about the possibility of Libyan nationals being picked up in any of the expatriate sweeps.
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