Pending Further Review One year of the church regularization committee A Death Foretold* An analysis of the targeted killing and forced displacement of Arish Coptic Christians First edition November 2018 Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights 14 al Saray al Korbra St., Garden City, Al Qahirah, Egypt. Telephone & fax: +(202) 27960197 - 27960158 www.eipr.org -
[email protected] All printing and publication rights reserved. This report may be redistributed with attribution for non-profit pur- poses under Creative Commons license. www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0 *The title of this report is inspired by Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez’s novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981) Acknowledgements This report was written by Ishak Ibrahim, researcher and freedom of religion and belief officer, and Sherif Mohey El Din, researcher in Criminal Justice Unit at EIPR. Ahmed Mahrous, Monitoring and Documentation Officer, contributed to the annexes and to acquiring victim and eyewitness testimonials. Amr Abdel Rahman, head of the Civil Liberties unit, edited the report. Ahmed El Sheibini did the copyediting. TABLE OF CONTENTS: GENERAL BACKGROUND OF SECTARIAN ATTACKS ..................................................................... 8 BACKGROUND ON THE LEGAL AND SOCIAL CONTEXT OF NORTH SINAI AND ITS PARTICULARS ............................................................................................................................................. 12 THE LEGAL SITUATION GOVERNING NORTH SINAI: FROM MILITARY COMMANDER DECREES