Egyptian Interior Minister Magdy Abdel-Ghafar on Sunday accused leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Turkey and the Hamas of carrying out the assassination of top prosecutor Hisham Barakat on June 29, 2015, Al Ahram reported. Hisham Barakat died from injuries sustained in a Cairo bomb attack. He suffered internal bleeding in the lungs and stomach and fractures to the nose and left shoulder.
Abdel-Ghafar said that Turkish-based leaders of the Brotherhood, the movement that carried Mohamed Morsi to the presidency in 2012, masterminded the assassination, and Hamas “provided training for militants to execute it and also took part in planning it.”
“We intercepted electronic communications in a way that had never been done in the history of the Egyptian security apparatus,” Abdel-Ghafar told a news conference on Sunday. “There is a major conspiracy targeting the Egyptian state… It began a long while ago and included a number of militant attacks, including the assassination of prosecutor-general Hisham Barakat.”
Abdel-Ghafar said Egyptian police had discovered several apartments across the country where Islamist terrorists were manufacturing explosives.
“All of those arrested were referred to the prosecution… they all admitted to being Brotherhood members,” Abdel-Ghafar said.
The minister played for reporters a video showing testimonies of people admitting to being involved in terror activities. They said that former health ministry spokesperson and now-fugitive Yehia Moussa told them to “prepare themselves” for the planned assassination of Barakat.
Some of them said they had received training from Hamas in Gaza, including in “tracking” and “planned operations.”
According to AP, Hamas has denied Egypt’s accusations of its involvement in the assassination. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the accusations are “baseless and are not in harmony with the efforts being exerted to develop the relationship between Hamas and Cairo.”