Egyptian Attorney General Killed in Cairo Explosion
The Egyptian insurgency against the dictator Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has taken a dramatic turn with the assassination of the country's attorney general, Hisham Barakat.
The Los Angeles Times reports that Barakat was killed by a car bomb as his convoy made its way through the crowded streets of Cairo. Barakat is the most senior official to be killed since the overthrow of the country's first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi.
It appears as though the bomb was placed in a car on the convoy's route and that it was detonated remotely because there did not appear to be the body of a bomber at the scene of the explosion.
His death comes after attacks on judges and police intensified when Morsi and other prominent members of his Muslim Brotherhood party were sentenced to death by the government. Hours after the death sentence was handed down, three judges were killed.
In addition to sentencing Morsi and his cadre to death, Barakat over saw cases where hundreds were given years in prison, and even death sentences, for crimes they were said to have committed, despite the fact the suspects could prove they were in other parts of the country at the time of the supposed crimes.
The Sisi government has also been accused of crimes against humanity for the way it cleared a sit-in in Rabaa Square, using live ammunition and armored vehicles in an operation that claimed more than 700 lives.
In addition to persecuting Islamists, the government also arrested, imprisoned, and tortured secular, liberal activists who advocated for a government similar to the United States.
There has been a low-boiling insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula, adjacent to the West Bank and Israel, but this bombing may foreshadow more intensity in the conflict.
