Egypt renews detention of 8 suspects over Sisi murder plot

Egypt’s military prosecutors have extended the detention of eight suspects for 30 more days on charges of belonging to Daesh and taking part in an attempt to assassinate Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi while he was on Umrah in Makkah, Saudi Arabia.

Prosecutors said that Ahmed Bayoumi and Bassem Hussein confessed to plotting to assassinate Al-Sisi. Bayoumi, allegedly the “cell’s leader”, learnt that Al-Sisi would stay at a certain hotel suite during his stay in Makkah so he and Hussein purchased chemical cleaning tools and made explosives then put them in a storage area inside the suite, Egypt’s Al-Shorouk newspaper quoted prosecutors as saying.

The suspects planned to have Bayoumi’s wife wear an explosive belt and blow herself up inside the Grand Mosque while the rest of the suspects would carry out their plot, prosecutors added, according to Al-Shorouk.

The suspects also allegedly plotted to assassinate Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Nayef with an explosive device if his procession passed outside the hotel or if his helicopter landed on its rooftop helipad.

When they were questioned by the High State Security Prosecution, 66 suspects admitted to carrying out 17 operations, Rassd news network reported. The alleged operations include the assassination of three judges who were in charge of monitoring the parliamentary elections; attacking the Egyptian army’s Battalion 101 by driving two cars loaded with explosives through the battalion; laying siege on the Sheikh Zuwaid Police Station in Egypt’s Northern Sinai Province; and attempting to declare Sinai as part of Daesh’s “Islamic State”.