CIHRS condemns slaughter of Egyptians in Libya, stresses need for Egypt to comply with international humanitarian law

The Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies condemns the monstrous crime committed by the Islamic State in Libya and offers its sincere condolences to the families of the victims and the Egyptian people. In a barbaric scene yesterday, the Islamic State in Libya slaughtered 21 Coptic Egyptians based on their religious identity after abducting them nearly four weeks ago.
The CIHRS stresses that any response to this crime must comply with international humanitarian law and resolutions from the UN and its Security Council.
The victims were kidnapped early this year. No one claimed responsibility for the act until ISIS (Da‘esh) published a story in its English-language periodical Dabiq on “the details of the recent operations by the organization in Egypt and Libya.” The article said that “soldiers with the Tripoli province captured and executed 21 Egyptian Copts in Libya,” justifying the murders as “vengeance for Camelia Shehata, Wafa Constantine, and the other sisters tortured inside the Coptic church in Egypt.”