Libya arrests an Al-Qaeda linked Egyptian officer
The Libyan National Army (LNA) published a picture of the captured Hesham Ashmawi, an Egyptian former military officer accused of being behind a string of high-profile attacks in Egypt. “The terrorist Ashmawy was arrested in the Al-Maghar neighbourhood in the city of Derna [eastern Libya] and was wearing an explosive vest but was unable to detonate it,” said the LNA on 8 October adding that he would probably be handed over to Egypt after Libyan security officials had completed an investigation. Ashmawi, alongside with nine other suspected fighters, were sentenced last December in absentia to death penalty by an Egyptian military court. Egyptian authorities say Ashmawi heads the Ansar al-Islam network, which they link to al-Qaeda and which they accuse of an assassination attempt on a former interior minister in 2013 and for masterminding a string of attacks, including the 2014 targeting of a security checkpoint in Egypt’s Western Desert that killed 22 soldiers.
- The Euromed news are edited by the team of the Euro-Mediterranean Policies Department of the European Institute of the Mediterranean -