Cairo Criminal Court on Monday sentenced a man to death over killing a Coptic priest in the al-Marg area on the eastern outskirts of Cairo in October.<\/p>\n
The defendant identified as Ahmed Saeed al-Sonbati was charged with murder with malicious intent against Samaan Shehata.<\/p>\n
Egypt\u2019s Prosecutor General Nabil Sadiq referred the defendant to trial the same month. Sonbati pleaded guilty during the first session of trial in November.<\/p>\n
Sonbati attacked priest Shehata while he was walking across the street on October 12 when the young man blocked the way, bashed his head and abdomen with a cleaver and ran away. The priest died on the scene.<\/p>\n
Shehata was in Cairo to collect donations for poor Coptic Christians in his Upper Egypt city of Al-Fashn in Bani Suef governorate.<\/p>\n
The evidence against the defendant includes his own confession during interrogations, investigations by top security bodies, eyewitnesseses, and a forensic medical report on the body of the victim.<\/p>\n
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cairo Criminal Court on Monday sentenced a man to death over killing a Coptic priest in the al-Marg area on the eastern outskirts of Cairo in October. The defendant identified as Ahmed Saeed al-Sonbati was charged with murder with malicious intent against Samaan Shehata. Egypt\u2019s Prosecutor General Nabil Sadiq referred the defendant to trial the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":71374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7863],"tags":[32917,32915,8383,32916],"class_list":["post-71373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english-section","tag-ahmed-saeed-al-sonbati","tag-al-marg","tag-cairo-criminal-court","tag-samaan-shehata"],"yoast_head":"\n