Mount Sinai monks threatened with deportation
An Egyptian ex-army general wants to tear down Saint Catherine’s monastery and expel its mostly Greek monks as a threat to national security.
An Egyptian ex-army general has called for a monastery in Sinai to be destroyed and the monks who live there to be deported—because he says they are a threat to national security.
According to Egyptian news source Ahram, Ahmed Ragai Attiya has filed suit to demolish Saint Catherine’s with the city of Ismailiya’s administrative court.
The Art Newspaper
April 21, 2014
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Although the monastery was founded in the sixth-century and was made a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2002, Attiya says that most of the buildings that comprise the complex were built in 2006 and so cannot be classed as historic, which would protect them from destruction.
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