Armanious family massacre

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The Armanious family massacre was the murder of a Coptic Christian immigrant family who lived in Jersey City. On January 14, 2005, Hossam Armanious, 47, his wife Amal Garas, 37, and two daughters, Sylvia, 15, and Monica, 8, were found murdered in their home. After being bound, the family died of puncture wounds to their heads, necks and bodies.

Many Copts, whose coreligionists report persection in Egypt, and some national commentators thought that Hossam Armanous had or might have been been murdered because of conflicts with Muslims in an internet chat room.^[1][2][3] On January 16 Monir Dowoud, acting president of the American Coptic Association, had told a crowd of 200 people outside the family's church that the murders were the work of "Muslim terrorists." (The next day the funeral procession for the family, had emigrated to the United States from Egypt in 1997, included about 300 people.)^[4] At a Feb. 15 press conference Michael Meunier, the president of the U.S. Copts Association, a Washington group lobbying for better treatment of the Copts, had said the method of the murders was similar to a means of killing described in the Koran the next day issued a statement decrying the slaying as "by Muslim extremists" and calling the family "modern-day martyrs in Islamic fundamentalists' war on Christianity." ^[2]

It took authorities almost two months to obtain the slain family's bank records and ATM surveillance video. When they did, they found that an ATM card was used to withdraw about $3,000 from Armanious' bank account in the days after the slayings. On March 4th prosecutors charged two paroled drug dealers, Edward McDonald, 25, with his wife and children an upstairs tenant, and Hamilton Sanchez, 30, with committing the murders in the course of a robbery on January 11. They said that when the younger daughter loosened her bonds and recognized McDonald he killed her, and Sanchez was accused of killing the rest of the family.^[1][5].

Many Muslims and Copts expressed relief. "Everybody is relieved that there is no religious implication behind it," said Maged Riad, a spokesman for the worldwide head of the Coptic Church (search), Pope Shenouda.^[5] The arrests, said Mohamed Younef, president of the American Muslim Union, a New Jersey group, "should get people to understand they should not jump to conclusions so quickly and try to accuse before seeing what the facts are..." Bishop David, spiritual leader for most North American Copts, had cautioned against leaping to conclusions and said, "If it is true that this is the whole truth, then everyone is ready to accept it... But a lot of things are not clear yet. It's very difficult to believe that four people were killed just to steal a card to take some money out of an ATM machine. A lot of things need to be explained in more detail."^[2]

In December 2005 Daniel Pipes still listed the Armanious family massacre as one of "a number of attacks involving American Muslim terrorists".^[6]

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