Asharq Al-Awsat

Top Egyptian terrorist Hisham al-Ashmawy was executed on Wednesday following his conviction over several high-profile attacks, the country's military spokesman said.

Col. Tamer el-Rifai said on his Facebook page that al-Ashmawy was executed Monday by hanging. He posted a photo of the militant in a long beard and wearing a bright orange jumpsuit that is usually worn by those sentenced to death.

"This morning the death penalty was carried out on the terrorist Hisham al-Ashmawy," he wrote.

He said al-Ashmawy was convicted in 14 crimes including a 2014 ambush that killed 22 Egyptian military border guards near the border with Libya, and the 2013 assassination attempt against the interior minister at the time, Mohammed Ibrahim.

Local media including the state newspaper al-Ahram as well as security sources had said last week that al-Ashmawy had been executed, though the news websites later took down their reports.

Egypt has been fighting for years militants in the restive northern Sinai area and the vast Western Desert.

For years, Egypt’s security forces considered al-Ashmawy the country’s most wanted terrorist for his intelligence value.

The terrorist leader is a former army officer, who was returned to Cairo in May last year after he was captured in Libya late in 2018 by the Libyan National Army.

He is accused of orchestrating several attacks.

The former special forces officer, who was in his 40s, was dismissed in 2012 over his radical views.

He joined Ansar Beit al-Maqdis based in the restive Sinai of eastern Egypt but broke off after the group pledged allegiance to the ISIS group in November 2014.

Known by his nom de guerre "Abu Omar al-Muhajir", al-Ashmawy announced the formation of an al-Qaeda-aligned group, Al-Mourabitoun in Libya, in July 2015.