An Egyptian military court on Wednesday (October 13th) confirmed the life sentences of 32 people accused of planning an "
assassination attempt
" of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and a former Saudi crown prince in 2014, their report said. lawyer.
The Egyptian president was then making a pilgrimage to Mecca as well as Mohamed ben Nayef, then Saudi crown prince who had also been targeted by the same "assassination attempt", according to investigative reports from the Egyptian prosecution picked up by newspapers when the file was opened in 2016.
Read also The story of the queen soldier Marie-Sophie: "Sissi's solar double"
On Tuesday, lawyer Khaled al-Masri said on Facebook that a military court had "
dismissed all the appeals in the case (...) and confirmed the verdicts as they were handed down, except for two defendants whose sentence has been reduced to 15 years' imprisonment
”.
Nearly 300 people accused of terrorism
As of June 2019, more than 290 people had been sentenced to prison terms in this case: 32 of them were sentenced to life in prison, i.e. 25 years in Egypt, 264 others with sentences ranging from three to 15 years. imprisonment, while only two had been acquitted. All were accused of having "
formed terrorist cells
" belonging to the Sinai Province, a branch of the organization of the Islamic State in this peninsula in eastern Egypt.
One of the crimes for which they were convicted was planning an "
assassination attempt
" of President Sisi and Mohamed ben Nayef, a former Saudi minister of the interior. Defendants were also convicted for the assassination of three judges in Al-Arish (north Sinai) in 2015 or for targeting tourists and members of the security forces.
For years, the Egyptian army has worked to end an IS-led armed insurgency in Sinai.
Jihadist attacks and violence increased after the dismissal in 2013 by the army of President Mohamed Morsi, from the Muslim Brotherhood.
And since February 2018, the army has been carrying out a large-scale operation against the jihadists, mainly in the north of Sinai and the Western Desert.
More than a thousand jihadists and dozens of members of the security forces have been killed in Sinai, according to official figures.
