Egypt’s public prosecutor has detained a disgraced monk on charges of killing a bishop at a desert monastery, his lawyer said on Saturday, in a case that has rocked the Coptic community, the Middle East’s biggest Christian minority.
The killing last month of Bishop Epiphanius, a 64-year-old scholar who had led the Abu Makar or St Macarius Monastery in Wadi Natroun, an area some 110 km (68 miles) northwest of Cairo, prompted the church to impose strict new measures on its clergy.
Lawyer Ameer Naseef told Reuters that an Alexandria prosecutor on Friday charged Wael Saad, a monk who was known as Isaiah al-Makari before he was stripped of his religious title, with the July 29 killing.
