Aug 9, 2012 / 23:07 pm
"Dramatic changes" in the Sinai peninsula region offer Egypt's government a chance to rescue trafficking and torture victims, an assembly of Middle Eastern Catholic leaders said Aug. 9.
"Due to the deployment of Egyptian troops in Sinai following the recent violence on the Israeli-Egyptian border, a window of opportunity opens up," the Assembly of Catholic Ordinaries in the Holy Land said in a communique.
The opportunity "must be used to put an end to the ongoing, festering sore of the prison and torture camps in Sinai," the bishops and priests wrote, renewing their March 2012 appeal which echoed the concerns of Pope Benedict XVI about criminals' treatment of migrants in the region.
Egypt deployed troops in the Sinai peninsula after militants killed at least 16 soldiers at a checkpoint on Aug. 5. The attackers took control of an armored vehicle and crossed into Israel, where six of them were killed in an airstrike.