An attempt at “kidnap conversion” goes wonderfully awry. From Compass Direct:
October 9 (Compass Direct News) — An Egyptian Christian teenager escaped her Muslim kidnappers last week hours after they had drugged her on a public bus. While holding her captive, they threatened to rape her and convert her to Islam if her family did not leave their Nile Delta city of El-Mahala el-Kobra.
At 10 p.m. last Tuesday (October 3), Laurence Wagih Emil, 15, escaped the ground-floor room where she was being held in Cairo’s southern Helwan suburb while her captors were away breaking their Ramadan fast with an evening meal.
The girl asked Helwan area residents to help her contact her parents in El-Mahala el-Kobra, 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of Cairo. Earlier that day, El-Mahala el-Kobra Christian community had staged a demonstration, 1,000 strong, to demand Emil’s immediate recovery.
Emil was able to call her parents with the help of Helwan area residents. One resident then took her to police, and officials escorted her to Helwan’s branch of the State Security Investigation (SSI), Egypt’s security police.
The girl’s aunt and uncle, residents of Cairo, immediately drove to Helwan to locate her, but they were forced to wait at the SSI station while police met with Emil from 1 a.m. to 4 a.m. on Wednesday (October 4).
According to Emil, the officers were friendly and offered her a sandwich and a soft drink. But 15 minutes later, she said, she was unable to move though fully conscious.
“You should say that you took the bus to Tahrir Square [located in central Cairo] and met a guy named Fady, who took you to sleep at his house with his mother,” Emil said police told her. “Say that; otherwise you won’t see your parents again.”
After Emil had regained use of her limbs, police had her sign a statement that she had met a male friend in Cairo and spent the night at his house, Compass confirmed. She was then reunited with her family.
“Laurence was in an awful state,” said Helwan lawyer Nader Amrousi Saleh, who was with Emil when she signed the statement at the state prosecutor’s office. Saleh told Egyptian weekly Watani, “We wanted her out. She’s fine now.”
According to Watani, the Christian girl’s parents made similar comments. “My daughter is back unharmed. That’s all that matters. We”ll do what State Security asks us to do,” said Laurence Emil’s father, Wagih Emil.
Text Message Threats
While his daughter was held captive, Wagih Emil had received several text messages from her mobile phone demanding that he and his family vacate the city.
“Take the rest of your daughters and leave the city, or you will lose them one by one,” read one of the text messages shown to Compass. “The girl [Laurence] is not accepting easily, but she will embrace Islam for sure.”…