By Theodore Shoebat
Muslims in Egypt snuck inside of a Christian family’s home. They entered a room where they saw a nine year old boy sleeping. They stole the boy and left a cell phone in his place. The father entered the room only to find his son missing. His twelve year old daughter told him that the phone had been ringing. The phone rang again. The father answered. A Muslim man told him that they had his son and wanted 200,000 Egyptian pounds (EGP). The father, utterly heartbroken, eventually paid the money and received his son. According to the report:
A group kidnapped a five-year-old boy, Kastor Amir Bushra, from Dafash village in Upper Egypt on the morning of 21 October. They scaled the rear wall of the home owned by his father, Amir Bushra, and broke into the apartment on the second floor. They then went to the child’s bedroom where he, his 12-year-old sister and 9-year-old brother slept.
Taking the boy, they left a mobile phone on his bed and fled the house.
The kidnappers later contacted the child’s father through the mobile phone demanding a ransom of 200,000 EGP (over £16,000) in exchange for his son.
“At 4:00 am, I woke up from my sleep when my daughter Nada knocked on the door of my room, she told me that she found a mobile ringing on the bed of her brothers. I took the mobile from her and answered the call. Someone told me that he kidnapped Kastor from his room and asked me to pay 200,000 EGP to return the child,” Bushra told ICC.
“I rushed to Kastor’s room and I was shocked when I didn’t find him on his bed. I then headed to the police station of Samatout first thing in the morning and filed a formal report with the Samalout Administrative Court.”
Despite Bushra contacting the police, they did nothing.
“Although I gave the police all the details of the call, the cellphone number which called me, but they still didn’t help us, they didn’t even follow up the phone call, try to identify the caller or arrest the kidnappers,” he said.
The family decided to pool resources and paid the kidnappers a negotiated fee of 45,000 EGP for the return of Bushra’s son. The exchange was successful and Kastor was returned to his father.
Fr. Estafanous Shehata, lead priest in Samalout Diocese, told International Christian Concern that cases of abduction are not uncommon in Egypt, particularly in the Christian community, and blamed government failure to hold perpetrators to account.
“Most of the kidnapping Christian cases occurring in Minya indicate the weakness and inaction of the security which is the arm of the state to impose its prestige, in light of the perpetrators’s impunity which leads to repetition of these kidnapping cases,” he said.
In some kidnapping cases, ransoms have been paid but the abductee has not been returned, either having been killed or sold.
The last statement in the report, written by Florence Taylor, is very true. Many times in these cases, the parents will pay the money and they will murder the son anyway. There are so many Christians to help in this dark world. We are right now helping Christians who are being murdered and raped in Pakistan and Iraq, and Christians in Mexico who are being slaughtered by the demonic cartels in Mexico. Please help these Christians and make a donation today that will save Christian lives.