Egyptian prosecutor killed as Egyptian judiciary continues to sentence Muslim Brothers to death

On the two-year anniversary of the protests that ultimately led to the coup of Egyptian President Morsi, a car bomb targeting Egyptian Prosecutor General Hisham Barakat’s motorcade exploded. The assassination was the first of a senior official in President Abdel Fattah Sisi’s administration, and occurred as Barakat was on his way to work Monday morning. Appointed in July, the Prosecutor General had led the Al-Sisi administration’s campaign aimed at suppressing the Muslim Brotherhood.

The judiciary in Egypt has sentenced hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood members to death for their role in the political violence which has swept through Egypt. Most notoriously, former President Mohamed Morsi who was sentenced to death for his role in a 2011 prison break orchestrated by elements of Hamas and Hezbollah. Egyptian courts have also sentenced to death various members of the Muslim Brotherhood, including Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie their role orchestrating violence at Brotherhood protests against the coup which ousted the Brotherhood from power.

Barakat’s death provides just a glimpse of the violence and unrest in the Sinai Peninsula since Morsi was ousted from office. In the aftermath of the coup, Muslim Brotherhood militants have launched attacks targeting police, military personnel and judiciary members. The Brotherhood has called for an “uncompromising jihad” against the Egyptian government, and Muslim Brotherhood channels have openly called for the targeting of the Egyptian judiciary, and foreign business interests. In May, immediately following Morsi’s death sentence, two Egyptian judges and a court prosecutor were killed by Islamist gunmen. Islamic State’s “Sinai Province” recently took credit for the assassination, displaying a video of the drive by shooting.  In January, a bomb exploded outside the home of Khalid al-Mahgoub, the judge who ordered an investigation of Morsi’s involvement in the 2011 jailbreak.

The Judiciary of Egypt has been criticized as a tool used by the Sisi regime to oppose all forms of dissent, but media sources routinely ignore any distinction between inappropriate suppression of civil society and the legitimate effort to defeat the Muslim Brotherhood’s terrorist violence.

Despite the judge’s death, the Egyptian government is unlikely to be cowed into ending its attempt  to break up the Muslim Brotherhood. Likewise we can expect that the Brotherhood, and other jihadist elements in Egypt, will continue to make the judiciary a chief target of terrorist violence.