The bodies of the Coptic Martyrs beheaded by Isis found in Libya

Oct 09, 2017

By Giorgio Bernardelli
The Libyan police found the remains of twenty-one Coptic Christians whose throat had been slit by Isis on the Mediterranean coast, in what was one of the most shocking media episodes of their horror propaganda. The Images of the blood-stained orange suits and the covered bodies of the victims - lined up in a desert area - were released yesterday by the Misurata Criminal Department. The discovery took place not far from the coastal area near Hotel Mahary, west of Sirte, where the massacre took place in January 2015. A few weeks later - on February 15 - the image of men dressed in orange suits bent on their knees, each with a militiaman dressed in black holding a knife at their throats standing behind them, were spread as a macabre message of the jihadists, and bounced quickly across the world’s media. Images accompanied by the threat of an imminent conquest of Rome.

Two and a half years later, the discovery of the bodies had been in the air for days: last week, in fact, the assistant of the Libyan Attorney General Al Sadiq at Saour, while announcing the arrest of a new group of Isis militiamen, had specified that among them there was also the author of the video of the slaughtered Christians. And that during the interrogations he had indicated the details of the massacre together with the place where they were buried. The news had rekindled the hope of the families of the victims to have the remains of their loved ones returned. At the same time, however, they could not conceal their bafflement of a rushed media announcement, lacking a proper check on the actual presence of the remains. Now, the dissemination of images would seem to have dispelled any doubt.

Of the twenty-one victims of the massacre - construction workers working in Sirte - only twenty were Egyptian Christians; in fact, along with them, a Ghanaian citizen, Matthew Ayariga, who worked together with the group, was also killed (according to some, he would have been converted by seeing the faith of his colleagues).

Due to the method used and the media effect of the images, the martyrdom of the Copts in Sirte became a symbol for the Middle East Christians: just one week after the news of the massacre, the Coptic Pope Tawadros II had already announced the inscription of their names in the Synaxarium, the Coptic Church’s book of martyrs. And the date of their feast, February 15, corresponds to the very day on which Isis broadcasted the video of their beheading. Today, their memory is also cherished by the Coptic iconography, which depicts them by the sea and with the orange garment, taking up the image conveyed by the Jihadists.

Thirteen of the killed Coptic workers came from the village of al-Our, in the district of Minya, Upper Egypt. And right here - at the behest of the Egyptian President al Sisi – they are building a church in their memory. The works are now about to be completed and it is therefore very likely that the bodies resurfaced from the Egyptian desert will be buried there, in a place bound to become a sanctuary of the 21st century Coptic martyrs.--La Stampa