Coptic lawyer Mamdouh Nakhleh said Wednesday he planned to withdraw a complaint against the newspaper Sawt Al Ummah for articles allegedly inciting sectarianism in Egypt and slandering his minority Christian community.
Nakhleh told Albawaba.com that he was satisfied by the newspaper’s publication of a correction, as well as the lawyer’s response and commentary by the Coptic Church’s legal advisor.
The lawyer said his lenient attitude was related to the paper’s rapid efforts to handle the scandal surrounding the article, which claimed that thousands of Copts had obtained asylum in the US by claiming, in falsified police reports, that their wives and daughters had been raped by Muslims.
The Coptic lawyer had filed a complaint with the prosecutor general claiming that the article incited sectarian hatred and violated press regulations by failing to cite reliable sources.
He contrasted the Cairo-based paper’s response with that of Al Nabaa, a tabloid whose article on an ex-Coptic monk’s alleged sex-and-blackmail ring was not, in Nakhleh’s view, followed up with adequate community relations efforts.
The lawyer’s action apparently laid to rest the second major dispute between the Egyptian press and the Copts in recent days.
Young Copts in Cairo and Upper Egypt rioted after reading the An Nabaa article, which graphically described the sexual antics of an alleged monk who turned out to have been defrocked years ago.
An Nabaa’s editor-in-chief was taken to court on charges of insulting Christianity and was subsequently expelled from the Egyptian Press Association. In addition, his paper’s license was withdrawn – Albawaba.com
