Terrorist Hesham Ashmawy has been executed by hanging, the Egyptian Army’s spokesperson Tamer al-Refai announced Wednesday on his official Facebook page.
Ashmawy was charged with killing, bombing, and committing terrorist acts in Sinai and the Western Desert after he embraced extremist ideology and joined terrorist organizations. He committed numerous terrorist crimes in Sinai since joining the Ansar Beit al-Maqdis terrorist organization in 2012.
He went on to form the al-Murabitoon terrorist organization in the Western Desert and the border area with Libya.
Ashmawy was finally apprehended by the Libyan army led by Field Marshal Khalifa Hafter, who handed him over to Egypt as part of a judicial agreement between the two countries to extradite criminals.
The execution came in implementation of two rulings issued by a military court.
In early October 2018, the General Command of the Libyan Armed Forces announced Ashmawy’s arrest during a security operation in the city of Derna, where he was wearing an explosive belt at the time.
Ashmawy, a dismissed army officer, has become a militant in recent years and is likely to have been involved in the Oasis attack on police forces, leading the government to deem him among their most wanted terrorists.
He was especially wanted in Egypt because of his involvement in 17 terrorist operations which killed dozens of army and police officers. The most important of these was the targeting of 101st battalion in al-Arish, in February 2015, which killed 29 Egyptian troops and injured 60 others.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
