As the Arab Spring rolls into its third year, high level government officials as well as random members of the Egyptian public continue to pile up as casualties of the widespread lawlessness it has brought in its wake.
On Tuesday, Jan. 28, General Mohamed Saeed was shot and killed outside his home in a West Cairo neighborhood. He sustained bullets to the head and chest. Saeed was the head of the technical office of the minister of interior, as well as a police general.
The gunmen were on a motorbike and sped away after shooting Saeed.
Mohamed Ibrahim, Egypt’s interior minister, confirmed Saeed’s death.
Ibrahim himself was the target of an assassination attempt this past September 5, which he survived. That attack was claimed by an al-Qaeda affiliated group, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, which claimed responsibility for several other attacks on Friday, which resulted in six deaths and many dozens wounded. That attack also reportedly resulted in heavy damage to the nearby Islamic Art Museum.
Mohamed el-Zawahri, the brother of al-Qaeda’s leader Ayman el-Zawahri, allegedly belongs to Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, which is also known as Ansar Jerusalem (“Supporters of Jerusalem”). El-Zawahiri and 130 other prisoners were released from prison during Mohamed Morsi brief tenure as president of Egypt.
It is no coincidence that Tuesday was also the first day of the second trial of former president Morsi.
After five hours the trial was adjourned for a month. Morsi was alone in a soundproof glass-encased metal cage during the court session. He is in trial along with 130 others, including terrorists from Hamas, Hezbollah and Muslim Brotherhood leaders. The charges against them stem from prison breaks which occurred during the 2011 upraising which ousted former Egyptian president Hosnai Mubarak.