Egypt Sentences Ashmawy, 36 Others to Death

The Cairo Criminal Court on Saturday sentenced Hisham al-Ashmawy, a former special forces officer turned extremist, and 36 others to death after they were convicted of terrorism, court officials said.

Dubbed Egypt’s “most wanted man” by local media, Ashmawy was returned to Cairo in May last year after his capture in 2018 by the Libyan National Army (LNA) in the city of Derna, eastern Libya.

He was convicted on several charges including plotting a 2014 attack that killed 22 military guards near the frontier with Libya, and involvement in an attempt to kill a former interior minister in 2013, a military statement said.

The former special forces officer, who is in his 40s, was dismissed in 2012 over his radical views.

He joined Ansar Beit al-Maqdis based in the restive Sinai of eastern Egypt but broke off after the group pledged allegiance to the ISIS group in November 2014.

Known by his nom de guerre “Abu Omar al-Muhajir”, Ashmawy announced the formation of an al-Qaeda-aligned group, Al-Mourabitoun in Libya, in July 2015.

The other 36 defendants tried with him were also convicted of terrorism charges, the court ruled on Saturday.

Their cases were referred to the Grand Mufti. Egyptian law requires any capital sentence to be referred to him for an opinion before executions can take place.

The court set a new session for March 2 to confirm the convictions after receiving the Mufti’s non-binding opinion.

In November, a military court had already sentenced Ashmawy to death in another terrorism case. Egyptian civilian and military courts had also sentenced Ashmawy to death in absentia before his extradition.

Born in 1978 in Giza, Ashmawy or Abu Omar al-Muhajir, 41, was an officer in the Egyptian Commandos as a member of Sa‘ka Forces or Thunderbolt Forces.

He was transferred to an administrative post in 2007 after a change in his behavior as he promoted for political Islam through spreading banned books. He was suspended from the army in 2009 after he stood a military trial; then he traveled to Syria via Turkey.

In 2013, Ashmawy moved to Sinai where he became in charge of the military wing of Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis. He started to develop the performance of the group and improve their militancy skills.

Following the June 30 Uprising, he was accused of failed assassination of former Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim, and the killing of a colonel and brigadier general during a firefight in the Qaliubiya village of Arab Sharkas.

Defected from Islamic State (IS) terror group, Ashmawy went to Derna, 250 km far from Egypt’s western borders, where he announced in a voice recording his leadership of the al-Qaeda-aligned militant group al-Mourabitoun in the Islamic Maghreb.

Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis announced in November 2014 its allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS), Ashmawy refused to pledge allegiance to ISIS.