Persecution of Copts Copts complain that the police do not respond when crimes are committed against them. Copts also have little representation in government, leading them to fear there is little hope of progress. In 1981, President Anwar Sadat, internally exiled the Coptic Pope Shenouda III accusing him of fomenting inter-confessional strife. Sadat then chose five Coptic bishops and asked them to choose a new pope. They refused, and in 1985 President Hosni Mubarak restored Pope Shenouda III. The government and other Egyptian sources blame tribal behavior in rural Egypt for much of the violence. During Mubarak's regime (following that of Anwar Sadat),
Anwar Sadat the telephone exchange building, and of course the radio and television building, where news of the Islamic revolution would then be broadcast, unleashing—he expected—a popular uprising against secular authority all over the country". In February 1981, Egyptian authorities were alerted to El-Jihad's plan by the arrest of an operative carrying crucial information. In September, Sadat ordered a highly unpopular roundup of more than 1,500 people, including many Jihad members, but also the Coptic Pope and other Coptic clergy, intellectuals and activists of all ideological stripes. All non-government press was banned as well. The round up missed a Jihad cell in