The bodies of 21 Christians infamously beheaded on the Libyan coast in February 2015 are to be returned to their families three years after their deaths, according to the persecution website World Watch Monitor.

The families of the 20 Egyptian Copts and one Ghanian Christian requested the remains be returned to them after an initial plan had been to bury them all in a single coffin.

Fr Maqar Issa, a priest at Virgin Mary Coptic Orthodox Church in Al-Our village, and the lawyer of the Samalout Diocese, Attallah Youssef Hanna, at set to complete the necessary paperwork on the families behalf at the National Security Agency in Cairo on Sunday, March 11.

A church, called Church of the Martyrs of Faith and Homeland, was built in honour of the victims whose bodies were found in October 2017 after the ISIS fighter who filmed the executions revealed their location following capture.

The 21 men were found close to where they were executed on a beach in the coastal city of Sirte.

They were declared to be 'martyred saints' by Coptic Pope Tawadros II after footage of their beheading was published online in a video titled: 'A message signed with blood to the nation of the cross'. Permission for the vast new church at al-Our, to honour the dead, was granted by Egyptian president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi.