Cairo // Egypt has accused the Palestinian Hamas movement and the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood of being involved in the killing of it’s top prosecutor Hisham Barakat.
Interior minister Magdy Abdel Ghaffar said on Sunday that 14 members of the Muslim Brotherhood participated directly in the plan to assassinate Barakat, who died in a car bomb attack in June last year.
“This plot was carried out on the orders of the Muslim Brotherhood ... in close coordination with Hamas, which played a very important role in the assassination of the chief prosecutor from start to finish,” Mr Abdel Ghaffar said.
Cairo regularly accuses Hamas, which controls the neighbouring Gaza Strip and is allied with the Muslim Brotherhood, of supporting attacks in Egypt.
Mr Abdel Ghaffar said the 14 people who “directly participated” in the killing were “part of a cell of 48 people who had planned ... a big conspiracy” against Egypt.
He said the entire cell of 48 had been arrested and “all those arrested are from the Muslim Brotherhood”.
No member of Hamas had directly participated in Barakat’s murder, Mr Abdel Ghaffar said “but they were involved in the planning and training of those who carried out the assassination”.
Barakat, 64, was killed when a car bomb struck his convoy in the upscale east Cairo district of Heliopolis.
He was the most senior government official to be killed since extremists launched an insurgency following the military overthrow of president Mohammed Morsi in 2013.
Barakat was appointed after Morsi’s was ousted, and was seen as a staunch opponent of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, referring thousands of people to trial.
After ousting Morsi, the authorities began a blistering crackdown on his Muslim Brotherhood movement that has left hundreds of people dead and thousands jailed.
Hundreds more have been sentenced to death or lengthy jail terms after speedy mass trials.
* Agence France-Presse
