Egypt executes defrocked monk convicted of murdering abbot at Cairo monastery
- Wael Saad struck the abbot three times in the back of the head with a steel pipe while Ramon Rasmi Mansour stood guard outside
- Mansour, also a monk, was sentenced to death but his sentence was reduced to life after he won an appeal
Egyptian authorities on Sunday executed a defrocked monk convicted of killing an abbot in a desert monastery north of Cairo, officials said.
The 2018 killing of Bishop Epiphanius, an abbot at St Macarius Monastery, shocked Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church, one of the oldest Christian communities in the world and the one that introduced monasticism to the faith. The monastery was built in the 4th century.
Two defrocked monks, identified as Isaiah and Faltaous, were convicted of killing Epiphanius and sentenced to death by a criminal court in April 2019. The Court of Cassation, the country’s highest criminal court, last year upheld the death sentence against Isaiah and gave Faltaous a life sentence.
Isaiah was executed on Monday by hanging In the Wadi Natrun prison complex in the Nile Delta province of Beheira, the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to brief the media.
The abbot was killed in the middle of the night in a part of the vast monastery not covered by security cameras. Prosecutors said he was killed with blows to the head by an iron bar.