Cairo - Arab Today
An Egyptian judge who tried former President Muhammad Mursi in 2015 survived an assassination attempt on Friday when a parked car exploded as his vehicle drove by, the Interior Ministry said.
The explosion targeting Judge Ahmed Aboul Fotouh, who presides over a felony court in a district of Cairo, caused no injuries, the ministry said in a statement.
Judges, policemen, and other senior officials have increasingly been targeted by radicals angered by hefty prison sentences imposed on members of the now-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for Friday’s bombing, which occurred in the eastern Cairo neighborhood of Nasr City.
Aboul Fotouh was one of three judges on a panel that in April 2015 sentenced Mursi, also a senior official in the Brotherhood, to 20 years in jail after finding him guilty of inciting violence that led to the death of 10 people in clashes with security forces in December 2012.
Meanwhile, authorities said on Friday they had arrested members of two recently emerged militant groups, along with weapons, explosives and proof that the organizations had been set up by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Police detained five leaders and other members of the Hasam Movement and Louwaa Al-Thawra, the Interior Ministry said — both groups that have claimed responsibility for assassination attempts on judges, policemen and military officers in recent months.
Both Hasam — an acronym in Arabic for the Forearms of Egypt Movement which doubles as the word for decisiveness — and Louwaa Al-Thawra, or the Revolution Brigade, have claimed responsibility for attacks, saying they are taking revenge for the government crackdown.
Source: Arab News