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CAIRO. — The leading Islamist terrorist Hesham al-Ashmawy, who has been convicted of orchestrating several high-profile attacks, was executed yesterday, Egypt’s armed forces said in a statement.
Ashmawy, a former Egyptian special forces officer and one of Egypt’s most wanted terrorists, was extradited in late May last year to Egypt from Libya where he was detained by the self-proclaimed Libyan National Army.
He was found guilty of several charges including plotting an attack in 2014 that killed 22 military guards and exploded their weapons warehouse near the border with Libya and the involvement in an attempted assassination of a former interior minister in 2013, the army said in a video message published on its Facebook page.
Ashmawy also took part in planning for targeting the commercial ships crossing the Suez Canal in the second half of 2013 as well as exploding security premises in the canal province of Ismailia following the army-led ouster of former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi, it added.
He fled to Libya after leading a terrorist operation in 2017 in a desert area in Egypt that killed 16 policemen and stole all the weapons, according to the army statement.
Ashmawy, 41, was the leader of the Sinai-based Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, Egypt’s most active militant group which pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in 2014. — Xinhua.
Online Reporter