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An Egyptian court has sentenced 11 Muslim Brotherhood leaders to life in prison on charges of espionage with the Palestinian militant group Hamas. They included the Brotherhood's supreme guide Mohamed Badie and his deputy Khairat al-Shater who were both handed life sentences - 25 years in Egypt. This is the latest of several sentences against Badie, who received a life sentence last week on charges related to mass prison breaks during the 2011 uprising. Five other Brotherhood members were sentenced to jail terms ranging from seven to 10 years while six were acquitted, the source said. The defendants were accused...

The former leader of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood Islamist movement, Mohamed Akef, has died in a Cairo hospital after an illness, the group’s lawyer said on Friday. Akef was “supreme guide” of the movement, as the leadership is known, until the end of 2009. He was among those detained in a crackdown after Egypt’s elected president Mohamed Mursi, also of the Muslim Brotherhood, was ousted by the military in 2013. Akef’s daughter announced his death on her Facebook page. The group’s lawyer, Abdel Monem Abdel Maqsoud, told Reuters he had received a call from the prison service to report Akef’s death...

A series of attacks by two little known terrorist groups may signal that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is re-embracing violence, American analysts warn. The two groups which only emerged last year, Liwa al-Thawra and Hassm, are believed to be responsible for a recent wave of terror, including the assassination of a Brigadier General, the bombing of a police facility in Tanta and the shooting of Egyptian police officers in Cairo. The area of operations and ideology suggest the groups are offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood. However, the Muslim Brotherhood officially renounced violence in the 1970s. If the central Muslim...

President Abdel Fatah Sisi’s visit to the United States later this month will be an opportunity to undermine the Muslim Brotherhood’s standing in Washington, a former Egyptian ambassador to the US said. “Presidents Trump and Sisi can break the ice created during the Obama administration,” he said. “Without doing injustice to Obama, he adopted the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood.” He added that during Obama’s presidency, “the Muslim Brotherhood shifted their international center of gravity from London to Washington. In recent years the Muslim Brotherhood penetrated American institutions and think tanks, and disseminated their ideology as an alternative to extremism.”...

Former Obama administration official Anne Patterson raising concerns Opposition is mounting on Capitol Hill and in conservative foreign policy circles over Defense Secretary James Mattis's efforts to hire a former Obama administration official who lobbied in favor of engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood and spearheaded efforts to criticize Israeli counter-terrorism efforts, according to multiple sources close to the Trump administration. Mattis is lobbying to hire former diplomat Anne Patterson as undersecretary of defense for policy, according to multiple reports, a position that would make her the third most powerful voice at the Defense Department. Multiple sources on Capitol Hill and...

Why Is General Mattis Nominating the ‘Muslim Brotherhood’s Stooge’? A familiar face from the Obama disaster in Egypt. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis’ pick for undersecretary of defense for policy, Anne Patterson, is problematic. Politico briefly explains why: If nominated and confirmed, Patterson would hold the fourth most powerful position at the Pentagon -- and would effectively be the top civilian in the Defense Department, since both Mattis and his deputy, Robert Work, were military officers. As ambassador to Egypt between 2011 and 2013, Patterson worked closely with former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi and his Islamist government. She came under...

A familiar face from the Obama disaster in Egypt. Reprinted from PJ Media. Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.  Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis’ pick for undersecretary of defense for policy, Anne Patterson, is problematic.Politico briefly explains why: If nominated and confirmed, Patterson would hold the fourth most powerful position at the Pentagon -- and would effectively be the top civilian in the Defense Department, since both Mattis and his deputy, Robert Work, were military officers.   As ambassador to Egypt between 2011 and 2013, Patterson worked closely with former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi and his...

The worst attack on Egypt's Christian minority in recent years occurred yesterday, Sunday, December 11, 2016. St. Peter Cathedral in Cairo, packed with worshipers celebrating Sunday mass, was bombed; at least 27 churchgoers, mostly women and children, were killed and 65 severely wounded. As many of the wounded are in critical condition, the death toll is expected to rise. As usual, witnesses say that state security was not present, and that police took an inordinate amount of time to arrive after the explosion. Preliminary investigations point to a bomb placed inside an unattended woman's purse on one of the rear...

Sub-title : Grand Mufti points out that Sharia forbids attacks on places of worship. The Grand Mufti of Egypt and an Islamist militant organization, as well as Egypt’s Muslim president, have all condemned Sunday’s attack on a Coptic church in Cairo that killed 25 and wounded dozens of worshipers during Divine Liturgy. “Attacking churches whether by demolition, bombing, killing those inside, or terrifying … secure people are prohibited in Islamic Sharia,” said the Grand Mufti, Sheikh Shawky Ibrahim Abdel-Karim Allam. The explosion in the church of St. Peter and St. Paul, which is adjacent to the St. Mark’s Coptic Orthodox...

CAIRO (AP) — A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral killed 25 people and wounded another 49 during Sunday Mass, in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. [Snip] "I found bodies, many of them women, lying on the pews. It was a horrible scene," said cathedral worker Attiya Mahrous, who rushed to the chapel after he heard the blast. His clothes and hands were stained with blood and his hair matted with dust. "I saw a headless woman being carried away," Mariam Shenouda said as she pounded...

CAIRO - A bombing at Egypt’s main Coptic Christian cathedral killed 25 people and wounded another 35 on Sunday, in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. The attack came two days after a bomb elsewhere in Cairo killed six policemen, an assault claimed by a shadowy group that authorities say is linked to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. Islamic militants have targeted Christians in the past, including a New Year’s Day bombing at a church in Alexandria in 2011 that killed at least 21 people. Egypt’s official MENA news agency said an assailant...

Full title : Muslim Terrorist Bombs Christian Church, Slaughters Twenty Two Christians And Injures Thirty Five More, Blood And Carnage Are All Over The Floors. An Islamic bomb attack against a church in Egypt, St. Mark’s Cathedral, has left twenty two Christians dead and thirty five more injured. Shoebat.com was able to find a video of the attack. A bombing at Egypt’s main Coptic Christian cathedral killed 22 people and wounded another 35 on Sunday, according to Egyptian state television, in the second deadly attack to hit the Egyptian capital in two days. Egypt’s official MENA news agency said an...

The Coptic Christians were in mid-prayer Sunday when the ear-splitting blast tore through their church in Egypt's capital, spraying shrapnel into icon-covered walls and blowing out the tiled roof. Witnesses said the smoke then cleared to reveal a tangle of splintered pews and body parts. "It was terrifying. Things were falling down on us. I couldn't get down from behind the altar because of the smoke," said church volunteer Tadros Zaki, 63. There were too many people. Destroyed, in pieces... people on top of people," said Romany, who rushed to the church to help after the bombing. The health ministry...

Officially, the government in Egypt says it has nothing to do with the coming election of an American president. But statements published in Egyptian media indicate significant support for GOP candidate Donald Trump, because of the likelihood the Muslim Brotherhood will increase in influence if Hillary Clinton is elected. Wrote Rania Hefny, a columnist in Al-Ahram: “The foreign policy of the candidate with the highest chance of winning the presidential election, Hillary Clinton, will be far more inflexible than Obama’s. She believes that the world’s problems will be solved more quickly if the U.S. is involved in the solution. [If...

Gehad el-Haddad, a top communications official for the Muslim Brotherhood, was seized by Egyptian security forces over his loyalty to former President Mohamed Morsi. However, it’s his previous job that has Americans concerned. Prior to his stint as a senior Brotherhood official and adviser to Morsi, el-Haddad reportedly served for five years as a top official at the Clinton Foundation, a nonprofit group founded by former President Bill Clinton. El-Haddad was the face of the Muslim Brotherhood and became well-known for supporting the organization’s crackdown on civil liberties in Egypt as part of their Islamist agenda. He achieved this role...

Harvard University Law School hosted a Muslim Brotherhood-organized conference on April 13 billed as a “human rights” forum on Egypt and Middle East. The event, titled “As Goes Egypt, So Goes the Middle East: Changes Begin with Me,” was organized by Egyptians Abroad for Democracy..... -snip- Dr. Mark Christian, executive director of the Global Faith Institute and a former imam who left Egypt and his Muslim Brotherhood-connected family 11 years ago to live in America, told WND that Harvard long ago sold its soul to the Brotherhood. He said Harvard is home to the nation’s largest chapter of the Muslim...

President Obama took the advice of “back-benchers” over experienced security experts to promote the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, creating condition for the usurpation of power by Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi: Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told Fox News that President Barack Obama ignored the advice of his “entire national security team” during the Egyptian coup in 2011 that ousted Hosni Mubarak, the country’s former president. …Gates, who headed the Pentagon during the Egyptian coup, lamented that, while he and the rest of the president’s national security experts advised Obama to handle the situation in Egypt cautiously, the president chose...

As the fifth anniversary of the social media-driven Arab Spring uprisings approaches, Egyptian authorities have arrested three influential Facebook administrators, accusing them of belonging to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. On Saturday Egypt’s Interior Ministry charged two men and one woman, all in their late 20s, with membership in the Muslim Brotherhood and using social media to incite against state institutions. Combined, the three individuals administer 23 Facebook pages.

Egypt at War Michael Rubin | @mrubin1971 07.01.2015 - 3:00 PM Over the last few days, Egypt has faced a terrorist wave. First, there was the assassination of Hisham Barakat, Egypt’s state prosecutor, the equivalent of the Attorney General. Barakat was the target of Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist animus for his role prosecuting thousands of Islamists since Gen Abdel Fattah el-Sisi overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated president Mohammed Morsi in 2013. Now, today, a wave of attacks has killed at least 50 soldiers in the Sinai Peninsula. Ominously, several Egyptian security sources are pointing the finger at Turkey, Qatar, and...

AIRO — Egypt’s top prosecutor died on Monday of wounds he sustained when a powerful bomb detonated next to his car as he was driving to work, state news media reported. The prosecutor, Hisham Barakat, is the most senior Egyptian official to be killed since insurgents began a wave of violent attacks against the military-backed government nearly two years ago. At least seven other people, including two bystanders, were hurt in the attack, which incinerated several cars, in a residential area of the capital’s Heliopolis neighborhood. Gen. Osama Bedeir, the head of Cairo security, said the explosive device was planted...