Cairo: Egypt’s top security official on Monday sought to build claims that the Muslim Brotherhood is backing terrorism, showing alleged confessions of militants saying they received funds from members of the group to attack police and the military.
The Brotherhood has denied any link to the wave of militant attacks on security forces, which have escalated since last summer in retaliation for the military’s outer of Islamist president Mohammad Mursi and the subsequent crackdown on his supporters.
The Brotherhood says government accusations that it backs the campaign of violence are aimed at justifying authorities’ drive to crush the group.
Militant violence first flared in the restive Sinai Peninsula but has since spread to Cairo and cities of the Nile Delta, including bombings of police positions and assassinations of senior officers. Two groups have claimed responsibility for most of the attacks — the Al Qaida-inspired Ansar Beit Al Maqdis, and a newer group called Ajnad Misr, or Egypt’s Soldiers.
At a press conference on Monday, Interior Minister Mohammad Ebrahim said security forces have uncovered 40 “terrorist cells” since April and proclaimed that authorities are in a “decisive stage in curbing terrorism.”
He aired the confessions of five alleged militants, saying they had masterminded a number of attacks. Some of their plots were foiled, Ebrahim said, but others were carried out, killing five senior police officers by planting explosives in their vehicles or posts or by drive-by shootings in the greater Cairo area.
In the confessions, one of the militants, who identified himself as Abdullah Hussain, said he had fought in Syria’s civil war alongside Ahrar Al Sham, a member of an umbrella group of Islamist rebel factions in Syria. He said he trained there in the use of weapons and explosives, then returned to Egypt three months ago and plotted the attacks on police and military.
The contents of the confessions could not be independently confirmed.
An alleged member of the same cell said in his confession that Hussain received money from a top ally of the Brotherhood, Wagdi Goneim, and from a teacher who belongs to the Brotherhood.
A member from a second uncovered cell Syed Ali claimed to have received support from another Muslim Brotherhood member named Mohammad Al Sabbawi, whom the minister said was arrested but had never appeared on television.
Egypt’s interim government has branded the Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation and has moved to crush continuing protests by Mursi supporters, arresting more than 16,000 and killing hundreds.
