Egypt’s Criminal Court designated the Sinai-based Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis militant group as a “terrorist body”, placing its founder on a “terror list”, alongside 207 other group members, the prosecution said on Saturday. Egypt’s top prosecutor Hisham Barakat said in a statement that the ruling was issued in a court session on Thursday, adding that it was based on his request. The decision comes in implementation of an anti-terrorism legislation issued in February to prepare a “list of terrorist bodies” and a “list of terrorists”, based on decisions by a special criminal judicial circuit at the Cairo Court of Appeals. The prosecutor general said his decision is based on investigation conducted in a case where over 200 Ansar alleged members are on trial for assassinating policemen and bombing security facilities. The trial of the 213 defendants resumed on Saturday. All defendants face the charges of “establishing, leading and joining a terrorist group, assaulting citizens’ rights and freedoms, harming national unity and societal peace, spying for the Palestinian Hamas Movement, vandalising state institutions, murder and possession of automatic weapons, ammunition and explosives.” The defendants are also accused of complicity in an attempt on former Interior…
