From the Middle Leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood… Harsh Sentences Against a Brotherhood Cell Aimed at Striking the Egyptian Economy
A terrorism and state security court, presided over by Judge Khaled El-Shabassy, sentenced members of a Muslim Brotherhood cell, along with three individuals affiliated with the Islamic State organization, including two foreigners led by a computer engineer, all belonging to the middle leadership of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood group, to life imprisonment and a fine of five hundred thousand Egyptian pounds.
Case documents reveal that security services had monitored several communications and meetings from abroad with the organization’s leader, who was on the run and impersonating a teacher in a province near Cairo, to revive a cell and task it with spreading false news about the Egyptian economy via social media, inciting citizens to oppose the state.
The cell included two fugitive brothers with multiple convictions; the first is an air conditioning technician and the second is a metal welder, along with a close relative, an agricultural engineer, and a teacher, in addition to two African individuals affiliated with the Islamic State organization who entered the country illegally from the west.
Investigations revealed that the accused had worked to gather basic strategic goods from markets such as oil, sugar, rice, and others at any price, in order to sow discord and anger among citizens, in addition to their contact with foreign workers to gather foreign currencies and encourage them not to convert them through legitimate banks, and to sell them at higher prices than official rates, with the aim of undermining the economic stability recently observed in the country.
Regarding the role of foreigners affiliated with the Islamic State, who had previously traveled to Syria and then returned to Libya before entering Egypt through that country, case documents explained that they had been tasked with monitoring several security and strategic sites, and collecting information about them, in preparation for conducting hostile operations against them.
After obtaining authorization from the public prosecutor and taking the necessary measures, the accused were arrested in a rented house under a false name of a doctor, where nearly 18 million Egyptian pounds, 740 thousand dollars, as well as other foreign currencies, two cars, four motorcycles, three foreign-made firearms, a handgun, several laptops connected to the Internet, international telephone lines, and two mobile phones were seized.
Security services also discovered a warehouse belonging to the accused, where food and strategic products totaling 2 million dollars were stored.
The accused were also found in possession of leaflets and publications, some of which were disseminated on social media through fake pages attributed to ministers, officials, and state figures, with the aim of spreading false and misleading information to stir up trouble and discontent among the public.
The public prosecutor ordered the detention of the accused and referred them to trial, where they were confronted with all the evidence, recordings, and filmed meetings concerning them, and the court pronounced the aforementioned sentence against them.”
