Egypt refers 48 ISIL suspects to military court over church bombings

CAIRO - Reuters

Egypt referred 48 people to the country’s military judiciary on May 21 for suspected involvement in three deadly church bombings and accused them of joining the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Egypt’s Christian minority has come under attack in recent months. Two deadly church bombings in Alexandria and Tanta killed more than 45 people in April, months after a bombing near Cairo’s Coptic Cathedral killed at least 25. 

ISIL claimed responsibility for all three attacks.

Public prosecutor Nabil Sadek said in a statement yesterday that some of the suspects held leadership positions in ISIL and formed cells in Cairo and the southern province of Qena to carry out the church attacks.

Egypt is facing a more than three-year-old insurgency led by ISIL that intensified after general-turned-President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi led the military in ousting Islamist President Mohamed Mursi in 2013 after mass protests against his rule.

Attacks were largely against security forces in the sparsely populated Sinai Peninsula in the past, but the group has spread its violence to the mainland and increasingly targeted Christian civilians in recent months. 

The referral to the military judiciary paves the way for the suspects to face military trial.

Sadek also accused the suspects of carrying out an attack on a checkpoint in Egypt’s Western Desert that killed at least eight policemen and receiving military training from ISIL in Syria and Libya.