Egypt’s Interior Ministry arrests suspects allegedly responsible for murder of general prosecutor, other terrorist attacks

The Ministry of Interior announced the arrest of several suspects in connection with the assassination of Prosecutor General Hesham Barakat in 2015 and the attempted assassination of former Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa in August, according to a statement on its official Facebook page Friday.

The statement claimed the Muslim Brotherhood is forming new “terrorist entities” to shoulder the blame for these attacks and a number of others.

Militant groups that have claimed several recent terrorist attacks — including Hassm (Arabic for determination, and short for the Movement of Egypt’s Forearms), Lewa al-Thawra (The Revolution Frontier) and Sawaed Masr (Egypt’s forearms) — are wings of the Muslim Brotherhood that were created as media fronts for its operations, the ministry asserted.

The ministry's statement was accompanied by videos aired on national television of the arrested members allegedly confessing to operations in statements that they appeared to read out.

The Interior Ministry's statement claimed the Muslim Brotherhood is forming new “terrorist entities” to shoulder the blame for these attacks.

The Ministry accused Nabil al-Dessouky Mohamed for the assassination of the prosecutor general, and Momen Abdel Gawad (aka Momen al-Hamrawy) for the attempted assassination of the former grand mufti.

Muslim Brotherhood member Ali Bateekh, who currently resides in Turkey, was named as the head of a Muslim Brotherhood group responsible for attacks in Cairo. The group froze Bateekh’s membership, along with seven other leading figures, during a crisis after the removal of former President Mohamed Morsi, as rival factions disagreed over the use of violent resistance.

On October 4, the Interior Ministry announced the death of Brotherhood leading figure Mohamed Kamal — who was allegedly the head of the group’s new militant wing — in an armed exchange with police forces hours after announcing his arrest.

Also on Friday, a car bomb believed to have been targeting Judge Ahmed Aboul Fotouh, who presides over cases involving deposed President Mohamed Morsi, exploded in Nasr City, leaving no casualties.