Simple Workers Seeking Better Lives
We were twenty-one men—twenty from Egypt, one from Ghana—simple workers who had traveled to Libya seeking jobs to support our families back home. We were carpenters, electricians, laborers. We were Coptic Christians.
Captured and Given One Choice
On a January night in 2015, masked militants burst into our compound and seized us. For weeks, we were held captive, knowing the fate that awaited us. Our captors gave us one choice: deny Christ and live, or confess Him and die.
Not one of us renounced our Lord.
Coptic Christian Martyrs Libya Beach
We were taken to a beach near Tripoli, forced to kneel in the sand in our orange jumpsuits, facing the Mediterranean Sea. Each of us knew this was our final hour. But what our captors saw as our humiliation, we knew to be our coronation.
As the cameras rolled, broadcasting our execution to the world, our lips moved in prayer. Some whispered "Ya Rabbi Yasu"—"Lord Jesus." Our brother Matthew Ayairga from Ghana, who was not raised Christian but had come to faith through working alongside us, was asked to deny Christ. "Their God is my God," he replied, and knelt beside us.
Twenty-one blades fell, and twenty-one souls rose to meet the Lord we loved more than life.
Legacy of Faith Over Death
Our blood stained the waves of the sea, but our witness reached every shore. The world saw men in orange, kneeling in submission—not to their executioners, but to Christ. They saw our lips moving in prayer, not in cursing. They saw faith triumphant over terror.
In the village churches of Egypt, our mothers wept—but also rejoiced. "My son is a martyr," they said. "He is with Jesus." The Coptic Church canonized us as saints, and February 15th became our feast day.
We were ordinary men who became witnesses—the literal meaning of "martyr." We had nothing to give but our lives. And that was enough.