An Egyptian pharmacist was arrested in connection with the stabbing to death of a Christian woman on February 8.
Madeleine Wagih, 35, was working alone in Mahaba Pharmacy in Kom Ombo, a Nile River city of about 60,000 people in southern Egypt. A man charged into the shop, brandishing a pocketknife. He stabbed Wagih in the throat, severing an artery. She bled to death quickly, said the Rev. Rofael Rizk, a Coptic Orthodox priest in Kom Ombo.
The attacker burst out of the pharmacy, and stabbed Marian Kamal Shafik, 18, in her back, near her shoulder. He yelled: ‘You Christians deserve more than that!’, then jumped into a waiting car and sped away, Rizk said. Shafik was treated at a hospital and released.
Police arrested Mahmoud Mohamed Ali Hamid, a pharmacist himself, within hours after Wagih was killed. Rizk said Hamid’s lawyers are preparing an insanity defence.
‘The lawyers of this assailant declared to the Kom Ombo prosecution that Mohamed is mentally ill, to acquit him of this crime’, Rizk said. ‘It is an audacious argument to make’, he said, ‘given that Hamid is subject to licensing and review by the government in order to work as a pharmacist.’
