CAIRO: Two young schoolboys beat a Coptic classmate to death on October 16 in the Egyptian town of Mallawi, raising speculations that the violence was a hate crime.

Originally, local media did not report the incident as sectarian violence. However, Copts Without Borders, a Coptic news site, refuted the point, reporting that the deceased 17 year-old, Ayman Nabil Labib, was attacked and killed because he was wearing a crucifix.

Labib’s parents broke their silence on October 30and confirmed that their son’s murder took place after the boy refused to remove a crucifix from around his neck and the cross tattooed on his wrist, which he was asked to conceal by his teacher, according to Assyrian International News Agency (AINA).

“The teacher nearly choked my son and some Muslim students joined in the beating,” said his mother in a statement with AINA.

Despite original reports stating that Labib was beaten in the schoolyard, Labib’s father asserted that his son was in fact beaten in the classroom.

“They beat my son so much in the classroom that he fled to the lavatory on the ground floor, but they followed him and continued their assault. When one of the supervisors took him to his room, Ayman was still breathing. The ambulance transported him from there dead, one hour later,” he said.

Two Muslim students, Mostapha Essam and Walid Mostafa Sayed, were reportedly arrested and detained, pending investigations into the murder.

The prosecution has three witnesses, including two men working at the school and a fellow student. The student tried to retract his statement but this was refused.

The murder came just a week after the violence at a Coptic protest in front of Egypt’s Maspero state TV building, in which 27 were killed and nearly 300 injured.

State TV discourse propagated the idea that Coptic protesters initiated the attack at Maspero, justifying the military-led violence on October 9, pitting Muslims against the Coptic Christian minority.

“Sectarianism is really rooted in Egyptian society,” stated Mohamed Zaree, program manager for the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) in an interview with Bikyamasr.com.

Zaree believes that sectarian violence will continue in Egypt, especially because the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) capitalizes on growing sectarian divides in the country to legitimize its grip on power.

BM

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