Turkey issues one-sentence condemnation of terror attack against Egyptian prosecutor

ANKARA

AFP photo

Turkey released late June 29 just a one-sentence statement to condemn a terrorist attack against an Egyptian prosecutor who had issued a death sentence against Mohamed Morsi, the ousted president of Egypt. 

“We condemn the terror attack that was conducted today in Egypt against government officials,” read the statement issued by the Foreign Ministry late June 29. The statement did not include any details about the incident.   

Hisham Barakat, Egypt’s state prosecutor, died of his wounds hours after a powerful bomb hit his convoy in the capital on June 29 after jihadists urged attacks on the judiciary to punish a crackdown on Islamists. The bomb destroyed several cars and blew out storefront windows in the upscale district of Heliopolis. At least five vehicles were completely gutted in the explosion.

The bombing came after the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s (ISIL) affiliate in Egypt called for attacks on the judiciary following the hanging of six alleged militants. 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 the military’s overthrow of Islamist President Morsi in 2013, with hundreds then sentenced to death. The June 29 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.