CAIRO — Egypt's chief prosecutor's office says it has charged 200 suspected militants with carrying out terrorist attacks that killed 40 policeman and 15 civilians, and of conspiring with al-Qaida and the Palestinian militant group Hamas in one of the country's largest terrorism-related cases.
The Saturday statement said the defendants, 98 of whom remain on the run, belong to the al-Qaida-inspired Ansar Beit al-Maqdis group, or Champions of Jerusalem, which has claimed responsibility for a wave of attacks that picked up following the military overthrow of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi last summer. Officials accuse Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood of orchestrating the violence, a charge the group denies.
The prosecutors accuse the defendants of carrying out 51 attacks, and receiving training with Hamas in Gaza, and in Syria.