Free Republic

A retired Egyptian general has accused a historic monastery of being a threat to national security, and a Salafist weekly newspaper alleged that the monastery collaborates with Israeli intelligence officials, according to the Egyptian weekly Watani and the Fides news agency. Saint Catherine’s Monastery, now Eastern Orthodox, was built by the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century and is located at the foot of Mount Sinai. It stands accused of being a beachhead of Greece and the European Union on Egyptian territory. “It is weird that our monks, and there are no more than 37 of us, would be accused...

A retired army general says he has filed a court case pushing for Egypt's historic Saint Catherine's Monastery to be demolished and its Greek monks deported on the grounds that they pose a threat to national security. In May 2012, Ahmed Ragai Attiya obtained 71 administrative orders regarding the demolition of the monastery's multiple churches, monk cells, gardens and other places of interest on the grounds, which he claims were all built in 2006 and thus not historic, according to Ihab Ramzy, the monastery's lawyer. ... In the same ONTV interview, Attiya levelled a host of accusations against the monastery's...