In the interest of providing the most accurate and timely information on which to assess security developments in Egypt, the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP) presents the ninth edition of its monthly Egypt Security Watch Briefs. These reports will serve to update TIMEP’s first full comprehensive report: Egypt’s Security: Threat and Response. Please download below the full ninth monthly briefing for June 2015.
The report and briefs are part of our larger, ongoing Egypt Security Watch project, which provides the most comprehensive available resource to monitor Egypt’s security situation, including an interactive map plotting all instances of violence or state operations, state actor, and terror group profiles, and expert analyses.
Notable developments from the briefing include:
On June 29, Prosecutor-General Hisham Barakat was assassinated when a car bomb hit his armored convoy in the Heliopolis neighborhood of Cairo. Barakat was the most senior official to have been assassinated in the country since the assassination of the Speaker of Parliament Rifaat Mahgoub in 1990. After Barakat’s assassination, Raba’a al-Adaweya Square was renamed Hisham Barakat Square.
Wilayat Sinai released a video entitled “Extermination of the Judiciary,” documenting the May drive-by assassination of judges in Arish. While Wilayat Sinai claimed only around half the number of attacks in June that it had in April and May, this may have been due to the fact that it was in preparation for its largest operation: a July 1 coordinated attack on over 20 locations across North Sinai. For more information on this assault, see TIMEP’s “Assault in Sheikh Zuweid: A Turning Point in Egypt’s Fight against Terrorism.”
Reports of counter-terror operations decreased slightly, with official government media reporting 155 distinct counter-terror operations, versus 205 in May.
The military began to dig a 10-meter wide trench along the Rafah-Gaza border, purportedly to better detect cross-border smuggling and terrorist operations.
Since the last Egypt Security Watch brief, TIMEP also published several relevant analysis pieces.
In the special report “Assault on Sheikh Zuweid: A Turning Point in Egypt’s Fight against Terrorism,” TIMEP provides its own analytic report on the day’s events, as well as interviews with experts Zack Gold of the Institute for National and Strategic Studies, Daniel Nisman of the Levantine Group, and journalist Mohanned Sabry.
Providing an analysis of a new draft terrorism law proposed after the assassination of Hisham Barakat in “Yet Another Terrorism Law,” Mai El Sadany compares the new draft law to previous versions, concluding that the new version still leaves fundamental obstacles to effectively investigating and prosecuting terrorism.
Download June’s briefing here:
Stay informed about developments in Egypt’s security sector by subscribing to TIMEP’s Egypt Security Watch monthly briefings here: