By Essam Fadl
CAIRO: Over 2,000 Copts demonstrated in Tahrir Wednesday and Thursday to protest the alleged “breaking into a monastery and the assault on its monks by army forces.”
The crowd marched from the Cathedral in Abbassiya to Tahrir Square on Wednesday night demanding an investigation into the incident.
However, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has denied attacking the Bishop Bishoy Monastery in Wadi Natroun in a statement on its page on the social networking site, Facebook.
“The armed forces only tore down walls that were illegitimately built on the road, on state-owned land,” the council said in its 13th communiqué since it took charge of the country on Feb. 11, stressing that it has no intention of tearing down the monastery in accordance with its belief in the freedom and sanctity of houses of worship.
The council urged Egyptians not to heed or circulate rumors in such critical times.
Eyewitnesses told Daily News Egypt that a number of Copts and army soldiers clashed during the attempt to tear down a wall on the border of the land surrounding the monastery. Four Copts and an army officer were injured and transferred to the Central Sadat Hospital.
According to a medical report released by the hospital and obtained by DNE, Michle Saber Yaacoub, 22, and Nady Aziz, 26, were shot in the lower-right part of the chest with a possible hemorrhage; Joseph Daoud Zaki, 23, was wounded in the right side of the chest; Ebad Saleh Ayad, 19, is wounded in the pelvic area; and Army Captain Mohamed Hoseiny Gaballah, 30, sustained a partial broken pelvis.
Bishop Morqous, the head of the church information committee, told Daily News Egypt that monks at the monastery built the wall to secure the area following the escape of a large number of prisoners during the wave of protests that ousted president Hosni Mubarak and the absence of police. The monks were then surprised that the army came to forcefully demolish it, he added.
Ramsis El-Naggar, the lawyer of the Orthodox church, denied the detention or the arrest of any of the monks during the clashes.
“We tried to calm down the protesters, but they insisted on organizing the march,” he told Daily News Egypt.
About 200 spent the night in Tahrir and left Thursday morning, before resuming protests again by midday.
