CAIRO: Egyptian authorities on Sunday executed a Coptic Christian monk convicted over the 2018 killing of the abbot of an ancient desert monastery, the monk’s family said.

“We were told at 8am this morning that the execution took place in Damanhour prison and I am on my way to pick up the body,” said Hany Saad Tawadros, the monk’s brother.

Capital punishment for civilian convicts in Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous country, is carried out by hanging.

An Egyptian court last year confirmed the death sentence for the monk Isaiah, whose original name is Wael Saad Tawadros, over the killing of Bishop Epiphanius.

Another monk convicted for his role in the crime was sentenced to life in prison.

“I didn’t even tell the rest of the family because I didn’t want them to be heartbroken. We thank God in any case,” Hany Tawadros said. Security and judicial sources also confirmed the man’s execution.

The abbot of the Saint Macarius monastery in the plains of Wadi al-Natrun, northwest of the capital Cairo, was found with a bleeding head wound after being bludgeoned to death in July 2018, in a case that shocked the Middle East’s largest religious minority.

Coptic Christians make up about 10-15 percent of Egypt’s predominantly Muslim population of over 100 million, and the country’s vast deserts are home to some of Christianity’s oldest monasteries.

The church later defrocked the pair and placed a one-year moratorium on ordaining new monks.

Prosecutors said Wael Tawadros confessed to beating the cleric with a metal bar as the second monk kept watch.

Authorities blamed the killing on unspecified “differences” between the bishop and the two monks.

In video footage of court sessions shared on social media in recent years, a sobbing Tawadros, wearing white overalls, accused interrogators of stripping him naked and torturing him physically.

Stop the Death Penalty Egypt, a group calling for the end of capital punishment, said that its pleas to President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to revoke the verdict and pardon the monk were ignored.

Published in Dawn, May 10th, 2021