The Tourism and Antiquity Police in Sohag, some 450km south of Cairo, have filed a complaint against those in charge of the Monastery of the Holy Virgin in Gabal al-Hawaweesh, Akhmim, Sohag. The police claim that the monks in the 16th-century monastery have been illegally constructing a concrete slab foundation on which to install an electric generator.
The supervisor of the monastery, Father Youssef al-Akhmimi, denied the monks were violating the law, and produced an approval from the Permanent Committee for Egyptian Antiquities for the installation of a generator. The police, however, insist that the permit was for a generator to be installed outside the wall of the monastery not inside it as the monks were attempting to do.
A reply from the antiquities authorities should decide the matter.
Watani International
19 September 2016