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Cairo bomb attack injures state prosecutor Cairo bomb attack injures Egypt's chief prosecutor
(35 minutes later)
Egypt’s state prosecutor has been wounded by a powerful bomb which hit his convoy in the capital, officials said, after jihadists called for attacks on the judiciary to punish a crackdown on Islamists. One of the architects of Egypt’s crackdown on dissent has narrowly survived a car bomb, after militants targeted his convoy in what was the country’s highest-profile assassination attempt in nearly two years.
The bomb destroyed several cars and blew out storefront windows in the upscale district of Heliopolis on Monday. At least five vehicles were completely gutted in the explosion. Egypt’s chief prosecutor, Hisham Barakat, was taken to hospital on Monday after the car bomb exploded as he passed an army college in a well-to-do suburb of north-eastern Cairo. Two of Barakat’s bodyguards were wounded, as well as a passerby, but different government institutions and state media outlets gave conflicting accounts of the seriousness of Barakat’s own injuries. Photographs from the incident showed plumes of black smoke rising from a layby filled with parked cars.
Witnesses said one of the charred vehicles had belonged to the chief prosecutor, Hisham Barakat, who has been taken to hospital. Mohamed Gamal, the chief of the bomb squad, told AFP it was either a car bomb or a bomb concealed underneath a vehicle. The bombing came after the Islamic State group’s affiliate in Egypt called for attacks on the judiciary following the hanging of six alleged militants.
Barakat was “not lightly wounded,” assistant state prosecutor Zakaria Abdel Aziz told AFP, adding he was undergoing treatment. Hundreds of policemen and soldiers have been killed in a low-level insurgency that has raged since the overthrow of ex-president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013. But Barakat is the first major government figure to be targeted since a failed attempt to kill the former interior minister, Mohamed Ibrahim, in September 2013. That attack was carried out by a Sinai-based jihadi movement that later declared allegiance to Isis, whereas Monday’s bomb was attributed to a less active Cairo-based group called Giza Popular Resistance, after the group claimed responsibility on its Facebook page. The claim could not be confirmed.
A police official had said the prosecutor had been wounded by flying glass. The timing of Monday’s attack has added symbolism, since it comes one day short of the second anniversary of protests that both hastened the fall of Morsi, and then brought Barakat to office. Many Egyptians support the direction Barakat subsequently took.
The bombing came after the Islamic State’s affiliate in Egypt called for attacks on the judiciary after six militants were hanged. But he is a figure of hate for Egypt’s opposition because he has, as chief prosecutor, enabled the detention of tens of thousands of government critics. Among the many controversial prosecutions Barakat has pursued, several have resulted in death sentences for hundreds of alleged supporters of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood. Rights campaigners also accuse Barakat of bowing to police pressure to prolong the pre-trial detention of dissidents, even when there is little evidence.
Gunmen in the Sinai peninsula, where the jihadists are based, shot dead two judges and a prosecutor in May.
Barakat has referred thousands of Islamists to trial since Islamist president Mohamed Morsi was overthrown by the military in 2013. Hundreds have been subsequently sentenced to death.
Monday’s attack was the most brazen against a senior official in Cairo since jihadists tried to assassinate the then interior minister in a suicide car bombing in late 2013.
Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, the Sinai-based organisation that later pledged allegiance to Isis, claimed responsibility for that attack.
In May, the group called for attacks on judges in an audio message posted online.
The recording came after authorities hanged six men convicted of militant attacks.
“By God, we will seek vengeance for our brothers and others like them, from the party that sentenced them, and the party that implemented the sentence,” the jihadist group said in the recording.
The militants have killed scores of policemen and soldiers in attacks since Morsi’s overthrow, mostly in the Sinai peninsula.
The group carried out several high-profile attacks in Cairo and the Nile valley in 2013 and 2014 before police killed or arrested its members in those areas.
The government of Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, who as army chief toppled Morsi, has blamed the Muslim Brotherhood for the violence.
Sisi has pledged to eradicate the group, once the largest political movement in Egypt.
At least 1,400 people, mostly Islamist supporters, have been killed in a police crackdown on protests, and much of the Brotherhood’s leadership has been arrested.
Courts have sentenced hundreds to death, including Morsi himself, who was convicted of involvement in attacks on police stations. Morsi is appealing against his sentence.