An Egyptian court on Sunday ordered the seizure of assets of 89 members and leaders of the banned Muslim Brotherhood and their transfer to the public treasury.
The Court for Urgent Matters targeted in its verdict former president Mohammed Morsi, Brotherhood’s supreme guide Mohamed Badie, his deputy Khairat al-Shater and former legislator Mohamed Beltagy.
Among the other most prominent jailed figures are preacher Safwat Hegazi, Mufti Abdel Rahman al-Barr, as well as leaders Mohsen Rady, Asaad El Sheikha, and others.
Morsi died in June 2019 while on trial, after six years in prison, so the seizure applies to assets inherited by his family.
The seizure is one of several initiated by a commission charged with implementing a 2018 law on the “organization and management of the assets of terrorists and terrorist groups.”
The army ousted Morsi after a year in power, following mass popular protests against his presidency in June 2013.
A 2015 Law for Organizing Lists of Terrorist Entities and Terrorists stipulated freezing terrorists’ funds and assets once used in carrying out terrorist activities.
However, the law was amended in January 2020 and now stipulates that once an entity or a terrorist is enlisted, all the assets and funds shall be frozen, along with those of the entities’ terrorist members.
Separately, Egypt’s Public Prosecutor Hamada El Sawi referred three defendants to the state security emergency court on multiple charges, including joining a terrorist group in Libya with the aim of carrying out attacks in Egypt.
According to a statement by the public prosecution on Sunday, the three defendants — two fugitives and a detained citizen — are accused of assuming leadership positions in the Mourabitoun terrorist group and joining al-Qaeda in Libya.
The group was led by Hesham Ashmawy, a former Egyptian army officer who was convicted of terrorism and executed by Egyptian authorities in early 2020 after being extradited from Libya.
The defendant admitted he joined a terrorist group in Egypt after escaping from prison in the wake of the January 25 Revolution in 2011, the statement read.
He confessed that he travelled to Libya, as per his group’s orders, to be trained and return to Egypt to carry out terrorist attacks.
In Libya, he and many others, including the two fugitives in the case, met with Ashmawy.
The now-detained citizen practiced organizational activities in this group until the Libyan armed forces detained him and Ashmawy and later extradited them to Egypt, the statement added.
