Cairo : An Egyptian court today listed Palestinian group Hamas as a terrorist organisation, a month after the group’s armed wing was proscribed declaring it a terror outfit.
Egyptian authorities have accused Hamas, an offshoot of Muslim Brotherhood, of meddling into the country’s internal affairs and supporting Islamist insurgents in Sinai.
The group has repeatedly denied the accusations.
The court’s decision came a month after the Hamas’ armed wing, Al-Qassam Brigades, was banned by the same court, declaring it a terrorist group.
The verdict resulted from two separate private suits filed by two lawyers against the Islamist movement, which controls the Gaza Strip along Egypt’s border. In March last year, Egypt banned Hamas from carrying out any activities on its soil and froze the assets of the group.
Meanchile, Muslim Brotherhood’s top leader Mohamed Badie along with 13 others was today sentenced to life imprisonment while four members of the banned organisation received death penalty by an Egyptian court over the killing of protesters who stormed the group’s headquarters in 2013.
The case is related to clashes that took place near the Brotherhood’s headquarters on June 30, 2013, four days before the ouster of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, that left 11 people dead and 91 wounded.
