Your Egypt

[Ausar]

A massacre in Sohag puts the spotlight on vendettas that sometimes last for decades

Hossam El-Hamalawy

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Local authorities rarely intervene in Saidi vendettas

In a bloody vendetta, 22 members of the same family were gunned down on 10 August in a car ambush near Beit Allam village in Sohag governorate. The victims, who belonged to the Hanashat family, were riding a van and a Peugeot station wagon on their way to the provincial capital of Sohag to attend the trial of two relatives accused of the April murder of a member of the rival Abdel Halim family.

According to police sources, five gunmen stopped the caravan and opened fire with automatic weapons, killing 22 out of the 25 passengers, including an eight-year-old child. The driver was spared because he didn?t belong to the Hanashats. After the massacre, the Abdel Halim gunmen went back to their village firing their weapons in the air, and transferred the male members of their family to a safe place for fear of retaliation.

Security forces rushed in to seal the village (whose population is 15,000) and conducted a search in the neighboring fields for the gunmen. Police checkpoints were set up outside the homes of both families and closely monitored all coming and goings. Authorities have also prevented the Hanashats from holding a funeral. The police buried the bodies of the victims overnight, in the absence of any family members. The following day, the police announced the arrest of three suspects.

The vendetta is the bloodiest in Upper Egypt since 1995, when 24 people were killed in a hail of bullets and knives in a clash between two families outside a mosque in the Minya governorate.

The feud between the Abdel Halims and the Hanashats is said to go back to 1990, when a fight between the children of the two families during a wedding turned into armed clashes. Both families are Muslims and there was no sectarian aspect to the feud.

Last April, when a member of the Abdel Halim family was murdered, suspicion immediately fell on two Hanashats (Helmi Ahmad and Ali Mahmoud) who were known to have sworn revenge for the killing of one of their own 11 years ago. The pair was arrested and their trial was due to open in Sohag on the day of the massacre.

The scale of the killing has shocked the village community. "Nobody imagined it would come to this," Beit Allam Mayor Abdel Qader Mustafa told AFP as some 30 riot police patrolled his village amid the corn fields. "We must at all costs prevent things from degenerating. We must try to mediate but nothing will be possible for a month. Once the Hanashats are better disposed, we will bring notables, religious leaders, deputies, to help sort things out." The Hanashats are understandably furious about the incident. The family refuses to receive condolences?a sign that they will seek to avenge the killings by themselves.

Firearms are rife in Upper Egypt, whose possession is a symbol of pride and honor. Along with it comes tar (vendetta)?a cornerstone of the macho culture of the region, with some feuds lasting for more than half a century, based on money and land problems.

"If someone hits anybody from your family, it?s normal that you have to retaliate by yourself, and take what?s yours," said Shennawi, a 25-year-old worker from Qena. "You can wait for years, but you can never forget."

Vendettas are regulated by a complicated system of norms and traditions.

"My uncle was killed by a man after an argument over land 30 years ago," said Barakat Al Tayyeb, a 26-year-old immigrant from Nagaa Hammadi in Qena who works in Cairo as a car cleaner at a gas station. "My family avenged his death after a year by killing that man." No further problems happened in that case. "Vendetta cycles only occur when the revenge targets anyone else other than the murderer," Al Tayyeb added. "In our case, the other family has since been my family?s best friends, as we only targeted the murderer."

Tradition does not allow the family to pardon a murderer unless he comes asking for forgiveness "carrying his shroud in his hands." The murderer goes to the rival family carrying a white shroud in his right hand and dragging a sheep by the other. It?s for the other family to choose whether to kill the man, or spare him by slaughtering the sheep.

"But in that case, even if they spare you, you are a dead man," Shennawi said. "You wouldn?t be welcomed in any gathering because you are a coward and chickened out from the fight."

A vendetta can also have long arms. "There was a case in the neighboring village of Hamra Dome, around seven years ago, when one family avenged the death of one of its members by killing a member of the other family who was working in Saudi Arabia," Shennawi recalled. Another method of revenge focuses on killing a prominent or wealthy member of the family?something that makes some Upper Egyptian migrants to Cairo change their names to avoid retribution.

Abu Bakr Faizallah, 30, is a Euromonitor market analyst whose family originally comes from Beni Suef. But "Faizallah" isn?t his family name?it?s "Hassabu."

"It?s become a norm that when Upper Egyptians emigrate to Cairo, they drop their family names, for fear of being a target for vendetta one day," he said. "Sometimes it?s not just about killing a murderer. In large-scale feuds, you tend to target the most ?precious? person whose death would really hurt the other family."

The government?s intervention in vendetta cases has long been criticized as ineffective, with local police often failing to arrest suspects?some say intentionally. Moreover, resorting to police protection is also considered shameful.

"The police at that time knew of our intentions to avenge my uncle?s death," said Al Tayyeb referring to the vendetta killing his family committed 30 years ago. "They told us we could only kill the murderer himself, and not anyone else in his family, and this way they wouldn?t interfere. The authorities were scared for a very long time."

But security personnel reject such claims. "This is crazy talk," said General (ret.) Fouad Allam, former head of State Security Police. "Of course the police doesn?t stand watching families massacring each other."

According to Allam, security agencies primarily focus on holding reconciliation meetings between the warring families, in an attempt to stop the vendetta spiral. The meetings usually include the heads of the families, in addition to representatives from the governorate, security personnel, and parliament members.

However he admits that a security solution isn?t enough for the vendetta problem. "We are talking here about a behavior, almost a religious belief, that you are trying to change," he said. "Other agencies have to play a role, including the media, the Ministry of Culture, sociologists, and psychologists, in order to change the people?s beliefs and end this barbaric practice."


Photograph from Al Akhbar archives

Volume 6, Issue 24
15 - 28 AUGUST 2002


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[Ausar]

'Welcome to Beit Allam'
It's been nearly a year since 22 members of the same Upper Egyptian family were killed in cold blood by a rival clan. Reem Nafie finds the village of Beit Allam still mired in vengeance and hate

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Click to view caption
The sign is new but the vendetta is old
The sign at the village entrance was put up quite recently: "Welcome to Beit Allam". The sign, combined with the sight of village children playing under the scorching summer sun, while older men lounge in coffee shops sipping tea and smoking shisha, gives the village a very normal feel, as if last year's bloody massacre was long forgotten and gone. But a vendetta still hangs over Beit Allam, this village 400 kilometres south of Cairo where, on 10 August 2002, a gruesome multiple murder took place.

Two months ago, in May, six men from the Abdel-Halim family were sentenced to death by a Sohag criminal court for staging that vengeful ambush, which killed 22 people from the El-Hanashat family, a rival clan from the same village.

The 10 August massacre was the deadliest feud to have taken place in Southern Egypt since 1995. The six men sentenced by the court had hidden in the fields on the outskirts of Beit Allam, spraying machine-gun fire on two vehicles in a murderous rage that killed 22 El-Hanashats -- including a nine-year-old boy -- in cold blood.

Ironically, the convoy carrying the El-Hanashats that day was on its way to a Sohag court to attend a hearing involving two of their family members who were accused of murdering an Abdel-Halim just five months earlier.

The dispute between the two families goes back to 1990, when an El-Hanashat was killed by an Abdel-Halim. The El-Hanashats waited until 2002 -- when they killed the Abdel-Halim -- to get their revenge. The Abdel-Halims, however, were far less patient. It took them only five months to lay their deadly trap.

While the six convicted Abdel-Halims are appealing their death sentences, another 13 members of the same family were also facing charges stemming from the incident. Seven of them who were tried by the same court on conspiracy charges were given life sentences, as were three of the six tried by a state security court on weapons charges. The remaining three state security court defendants were cleared of the charges against them, but for security reasons have not yet been released. All the criminal court convictions are currently being appealed; as for the state security court verdicts, they cannot be appealed.

Official statements claiming that the court verdicts will help restore calm to Beit Allam do not seem to be supported by facts on the ground. El- Hanashat family leaders told Al-Ahram Weekly that the "verdict is unfair and does not match the brutality of the incident". For the El-Hanashats, justice can only be served via a mathematical eye-for-an- eye equation. In their view, it is unacceptable that only six Abdel-Halims are getting the death penalty for killing 22 El-Hanashats. "What about the remaining 16 El-Hanashat lives? Don't they count for anything?" asked one family member.

That sentiment explains the heavy security presence surrounding the Abdel-Halim family house, protection against a potential El-Hanashat retaliation meant to avenge the honour of their 22 fallen men.

"We are here," one of the security officers told the Weekly, "because we can't risk another round of violence, now that the situation has just started to calm down."

Although the security source also claimed, "the El-Hanashats are calm and satisfied with the verdict," according to one El-Hanashat family leader, the only solution that would comfort the El- Hanashats would be the court sentencing 22 members of the Abdel-Halim family to death. Fully aware of the impossibility of that happening (especially considering the fact that only 19 Abdel- Halim family members were on trial in the first place), the El-Hanashat source said, "otherwise the feud won't end. The Abdel-Halims killed 22 and we want 22 lives in return, not just six, or I swear that next time we will kill 90, and no one can stop us, not even the police."

Despite this kind of anger, officials like Hishmat Abul-Kheir, the Shura Council member from Sohag assigned by the government to arrange reconciliation meetings between the two families, still thinks the two families may be able to call a truce. According to Abul-Kheir, "16 of the Abdel- Halims can be considered dead, since the lives of the 10 sentenced to life imprisonment will probably end in prison."

This sort of logic, however, did not convince the El-Hanashats spoken to by the Weekly . "If you're not hung or killed," they said, "then you are considered alive." The family rejected offers regarding a reconciliation meeting, saying they refused to talk about "peace" between the families until the appeals process is over. "We can't talk about peace until there is a definite ruling, and then we will think about it," said one of the El- Hanashats, despite the fact that they are all well aware that expecting the courts to hand down the death penalty instead of the 10 life sentences it had already handed down was far-fetched. "No court will ever do that, but we are waiting anyway, giving the authorities the benefit of the doubt," one of the El-Hanashats said. The appeals are not expected to be ruled on for another 4-6 months.

The El-Hanashat clan feels they are being reasonable in other ways as well. Although immediately following the massacre, the 13 El-Hanashat men married to Abdel-Halim women threatened to divorce their wives, they didn't end up doing so. "We were enraged at first," explained one of the El-Hanashats, "and said we would divorce them. But when you think of it, it's not their fault. So we stayed with them and the children, and didn't destroy our families." In fact, the women are even allowed to occasionally visit their Abdel-Halim relatives, albeit only for a few hours during the day.

Nevertheless, several of these same men made it clear that they would readily kill their Abdel- Halim wife's brother or father if they were given the chance.

Despite all the anger and hatred, many of the El- Hanashats also say they are trying their best to lead a normal life. "We go to work, the children go to school," one of them said, "even though the incident will never be forgotten. It will live with us forever."

The 22 men who were killed last August were considered some of the clan's finest -- many were well-educated and major breadwinners. According to El-Hanashat elders, the clan's women were the most affected by the killings, and they are the ones having the greatest difficulty going on with their lives. "One of the women lost a husband and a son. Until today she doesn't talk to anyone and constantly cries," one said. The El-Hanashats refused to allow the Weekly to talk to any of the women, saying it would "reopen their wounds".

The younger family members, meanwhile, are not being pressured to take a particular course of action vis a vis the vendetta. "No one is going to force me to kill an Abdel-Halim," said a 16-year- old El-Hanashat boy. "But if I do ever see one, I will kill him because of what he did to us."

Luckily, then, although they live side-by-side, the El-Hanashats and Abdel-Halims have not really met since last August. "We avoid streets we might see them on, and the authorities have [the Abdel-Halims] confined to their houses, so they rarely go out," said an El-Hanashat. For security reasons, members of both clans were even banned from attending court hearings.

According to other villagers, nearly the entire Abdel-Halim clan had fled the village prior to last year's attack. Since then, only the family's older men, women and children have returned.

The head of the Abdel-Halim family -- an old man the villagers call "One-legged Abdel-Shafie" -- refused to comment on the current situation. He did, however, send a messenger to tell the Weekly that he "does not have anything to say, and does not like media exposure". The villagers explained that the Abdel-Halims never speak to the press, for fear that they will always seem like "villains to anyone who does not understand the Southern mentality".

According to Abdallah, an older villager with close ties to both families, the people of Beit Allam agree that killing is "a horrid act", but when "we talk about taar (the Arabic word for vendetta), it's different -- it has to do with our honour and who we are." Abdallah said that "everyone in this small village knows that this is not the end, and that no matter what the court says, the Abdel- Halims and El-Hanashats will continue to shed each other's blood."

Basil -- one of the younger El-Hanashat children -- agreed. "The feud will only end if one of the families wipes the other one out completely," he warned. "We will strike back even if it takes us 100 years."


http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/646/eg1.htm

[Ausar]

Unease in Egyptian village amid fears of more violence
BEIT ALLAM (Egypt) - A few traces of dried blood and broken glass on a village street were the only reminders yesterday of the explosion of vengeance which felled 22 members of a single family the previous day.

A ghostly silence enveloped this small farming community of some 15,000 souls as residents bolted themselves up in their homes for fear the killings would unleash a new spiral of violence.

Even here in Upper Egypt where vendetta is a long-established tradition, villagers were at a loss to explain the hatred which had prompted a handful of gunmen from the Abdel Haleem family to mount the deadly ambush against their bitter rivals the Hanashats on Saturday morning.

"Nobody imagined it would come to this," said mayor Abdel Qader Mustafa as some 30 riot police, armed with Kalashnikovs, patrolled his village amid the maize fields, some 400 kilometres south of Cairo.

"We must at all costs prevent things from degenerating," he told AFP. "We must try to mediate but nothing will be possible for a month. The anger is very high among the Hanashats. They refuse to receive condolences.

Neighbours said that anxious police had denied the Hanashats the opportunity to hold a funeral - officers quietly buried the bodies of the dead overnight without any family present. Riot police set up checkpoints outside the homes of both families and closely monitored all coming and goings.

Neighbours said that only women were left inside the Abdel Haleem household - the men had all long since fled into dusty hills above the village for fear of being picked up by police. Villagers said the hatred between the Abdel Haleems and the Hanashats went back well over a decade.

Both Muslim families, there was no communal dimension to the rivalry in a region long marred by attacks on the Coptic Christian minority. "It all started with disputes between children, during a marriage. They used to accuse each other of being hooligans," villager Nageh Amin recalled. "Then when they grew up, they started killing each other."

In April, when an Abdel Haleem was murdered, suspicion immediately fell on two Hanashats - Helmi Ahmed and Ali Mahmoud - who were known to have sworn revenge for the killing of a Hanashat 11 years ago. The pair were arrested and their trial was due to open in Sohag on Saturday, but the Abdel Halems took the law into their own hands first. - AFP

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http://www.khaleejtimes.co.ae/ktarchive/120802/middleeast.htm

[Ausar]

Clash of clans cost 22 lives

August 12 2002

Twenty-two people belonging to the same family were gunned down in Egypt yesterday, in the bloodiest vendetta killing since 1995, a police official said.

Three other members of the same family, Al-Hanashat, were wounded in the ambush set up by members of the rival Abdul Haleem clan near Sohag, in Upper Egypt, 400km south of Cairo, he added.

The victims were on board two minibuses, travelling from their village, Beit Allam, to Sohag, the provincial capital, when they were ambushed by five or six gunmen from the rival clan hiding in the fields, he said.

The Abdul Haleems ordered the bus to a halt and strafed them with bullets from machine-guns, killing all passengers except three who took shelter under the seats and suffered injuries, he said.

The Al-Hanashats were heading to Sohag to attend the court hearing of two relatives charged with the murder of a Abdul Haleem family member last April, the official said.

Helmi Ahmed and Ali Mahmud, members of the Al-Hanashat family, were accused of killing Hamman Abdul Haleem in revenge for the murder of a relative 11 years ago by the rival clan.

The official, who ruled out the possibility that the violence was a "terrorist" act, said security forces have deployed in Beit Allam and sealed off the village in order to bring the situation under control.

The interior ministry confirmed in a statement that the rivalry between the two families went back to 1990.

The police raided the village several times since, confiscating firearms, said the statement, adding that during the last operation, in April, seven weapons were seized including three machine-guns.

The possession of firearms, including automatic rifles, is widespread in Upper Egypt.

Vendettas are fairly frequent in Upper Egypt, and this one was the bloodiest since 1995, when 24 people were killed with gunfire and knives in a clash between two families outside a mosque in the Minya province.

In March 1998, a man involved in the 1995 vendetta, killed seven people and injured nine others from the rival family.

Past feuds have also been linked to fundamentalist groups.

"Tar", the Arabic word for vendetta, is a deeply rooted custom in southern Egypt, and some feuds have lasted for more than half a century, often linked to money and land disputes.

Sometimes, families task under-age members with the revenge killing as they would face lighter sentences if caught.

Under vendetta rules, the family of the killed does not grant its pardon to the murderer or his family, and would not accept condolences nor mourn its dead until its honour is "washed" with the blood of the rival clan.

A murderer can be pardoned sometimes, if he crosses the village barefeet, holding on his head a shroud that he has to lay down at the feet of the rival clan's head. But the man is often killed on his way by a relative seeking to preserve the family from such a "dishonour".

AFP

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http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/08/11/1028158048327.html

[Ausar]

Saturday, 10 August, 2002, 15:22 GMT 16:22 UK
Egypt feud ends in carnage
[Map of Upper Egypt]
The family was ambushed on the way to Gerga
Gunmen ambushed and killed 22 members of a rival family on Saturday in the Upper Egyptian province of Sohag, according to police officials.

The victims - members of the Hashashba family - were stopped on the road linking the small town of Gerga to the provincial capital Sohag, 400 kilometres (250 miles) south of Cairo.

The Hashashbas were on their way to a court hearing in Gerga when members of the Abdul Haleems family opened fire.

All 22 victims died inside their vehicles, police said. Three other people were wounded.

The gunmen reportedly fled into a corn field and remain at large.

The slain Hashashbas had been planning to attend the trial of two family members who have been accused of killing one of the Abdul Haleems last April.

Saturday's attack was apparently designed to avenge his death.

Family feud

Helmi Ahmed Hashab and Ali Mahmud Hashab, members of the Hashashba family, are accused of killing Hamman Abdul Haleem in revenge for the murder of a relative 11 years ago.

The Hashashbas and the Abdul Haleems live in the village of Beit Allam, near Sohag.

It has now been sealed off and extra security forces are being deployed in an attempt to prevent further violence between the families.
[corn]
The gunmen fled into a corn field

Blood feuds and honour killings are common in parts of the Arab world.

This is especially true in Upper Egypt, a rural area of the country where societies adhere to strict rules that have been followed for centuries.

Saturday's clash was the deadliest outbreak of clan violence since 1995, when 24 people were killed in a clash between rival families outside a mosque in Minya province.

In March 1998, a man involved in the 1995 vendetta, killed seven people and injured nine others from the rival family.

Past feuds have also been linked to Islamic fundamentalist groups.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2185164.stm

[Ausar]

Egyptians charged over feud deaths
[Map of Upper Egypt]
The family was ambushed on the way to Gerga
Thirteen Egyptian men have been charged with the murder of 22 members of a rival family in a blood feud that began 11 years ago.

[Cairo skyline]
Blood feuds are common in rural Egypt, far from the world of Cairo
If convicted, they could face the death penalty.

A further six family members were charged with illegally possessing weapons, while the mayor of a neighbouring village is also to stand trial for harbouring two of the accused.

The men, from the Abdel-Halim family, are accused of ambushing the rival Hanashat family in the Upper Egyptian province of Sohag - 400 km [250 miles] south of Cairo - and opening fire on the minibuses they were travelling in earlier this month.

All 22 victims died inside their vehicles, police said. Three other people were wounded in the incident.

Deaths 'avenged'

The slain Hanashats had been planning to attend the trial of two family members in the town of Gerga.

They have been accused of killing one of the Abdel-Halims last April.

The attack on their convoy was apparently to avenge their deaths.

The family feud, which has been running for a decade, is thought to have been sparked by a fight between children.

Both families live in the village of Beit Allam, near Sohag.

Family feud

Blood feuds and "honour killings" are common in parts of the Arab world.

Correspondents say this is particularly true in rural Upper Egypt, where communities adhere to strict rules that have been followed for centuries.

The clash was the deadliest outbreak of clan violence since 1995, when 24 people were killed in a clash between rival families outside a mosque in Minya province.

In March 1998, a man involved in the 1995 vendetta killed seven people and injured nine others from the rival family.

Past feuds have also been linked to militant Islamic groups.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/38189000/gif/_38189179_egypt_sohag_300map.gif

[Monica]

Fabulous reading!
Thank you...........................

[alark]

I've read these articles before on another online site. I guess I have a question. This activity occurs in rural areas such as Sohag, but when someone moves out of Sohag...say to Cairo...does the family feud continue?

[Ausar]

The tar goes whever the person goes. Usually many rural people in Upper Egypt have family members in certain neighboorhoods within Cairo.