At least 18 activists, including some of Egypt's most prominent bloggers, were arrested yesterday when they attempted to visit the town of Naga Hammadi and offer condolences over the killing of six Christians and a Muslim security guard last week. 

They were intercepted on arrival, as they stepped off a train, and at the time of writing their whereabouts is unknown. Reports: Al-Masry al-Youm and Bikya Masr. The Egyptian Chronicles andArabist blogs also have lists of those arrested.

The Egyptian authorities are clearly very touchy about the murders and the riots that followed them. There is also a widespread reluctance to admit to the existence of sectarian tensions in the country.

The government's official line – incredible as it may seem – is that the violence was an isolated incident and not sectarian in character. Naga Hammadi's member of parliament, Fathi Qandil, last week blamed it on "a hot-headed man" and insisted that "no reconciliation is needed between Muslims and Christians here because they're already reconciled. Nothing happened that warrants reconciliation."

There were similar examples of denial among people interviewed by Al-Masry al-Youm in the streets of Cairo this week:

Hajj Ahmed, 60, newspaper kiosk owner: “I think it is a Jewish conspiracy against Egyptians to distort our image in the West. They hired hit men to shoot some Christians. Jews aim at causing sectarian strife between Egyptian Muslims and Christians.”

Ahmed el Sayed, 33, lawyer: “Of course, it is criminal action because we all love one another here. It is the media that always tends to exaggerate this issue. Why doesn’t it focus on vendetta where Muslims kill each other every day in Upper Egypt and nobody bothers to stop that?”

Said Safwat, 40, science teacher: “There isn’t sectarian strife in Egypt. It is so clear that they are taking revenge for the rape of a 12-year-old Muslim girl by a Christian man.”

Zeinobia, at the Egyptian Chronicles blog, challenges the idea that the killings were a reprisal for the Muslim girl's rape. She points out that the alleged rapist was already under arrest and says: "According to retaliation tradition laws in Upper Egypt the father of the girl or her brother is the one who should revenge for his daughter or sister’s honour from that man or his family only."

The man alleged to be leader of the gang that killed the Christians is widely reported to be a well-known criminal with links to the ruling National Democratic Party.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 16 January 2010.