Authorities carried out the death penalty on an Egyptian monk who killed the abbot of his monastery in 2018, a lawyer and the monk's brother told Reuters on Sunday.
Wael Saad and Ramon Rasmi Mansour, known by their monastic names Isaiah al-Makari and Faltaous al-Makari, were convicted of the killing of Bishop Epiphanius, 64, the abbot of St Macarius Monastery, northwest of Cairo, in a case that sent shockwaves through Egypt's Coptic Christian community.
Saad's family was notified to receive his body from a morgue in the Nile Delta town of Damanhour on Sunday, his brother, who is also a monk, said.
Prosecutors had said during their trial that Saad struck the bishop three times in the back of the head with a steel pipe while Mansour stood guard outside.
Mansour was also sentenced to death but his sentence was reduced to life after he won an appeal.
They were defrocked in August 2018 for what church officials called violations of monastic life and then detained.
Egypt’s highest civilian court on January 15,2020 (Wednesday) ordered a retrial of two monks sentenced to death for murdering a bishop at a Coptic Christian monastery, two judicial sources said on Wednesday.
The 2018 killing of 64-year-old Bishop Epiphanius, at Saint Macarius Monastery in the desert, rattled Egyptian Coptics who make up about 10 percent of the predominantly Muslim population.
Wael Saad, known by his monastic name Isaiah Al-Makari, and Ramon Rasmi Mansour, known as Faltaous Al-Makari, were convicted by a criminal court last year. Both had pleaded innocent.
Prosecutors said Saad, who had a history of differences with superiors, struck the bishop three times in the back of the head with a steel pipe while Mansour stood guard outside.
But the judicial sources told Reuters the cassation court abolished the death sentence after an appeal from the monks and will hear the case itself next April. Its rulings are final.
At the first trial, prosecutors and witnesses said Saad had been investigated for breaking monastic rules, including by trying to buy and sell land. He was defrocked in 2018.
After the murder, both men tried unsuccessfully to commit suicide, Saad by poisoning himself and Mansour by jumping off the monastery roof.