Washington Institute urges U.S. gov’t to declare Hasm terroristic

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Tue, 03 Oct 2017 - 01:41 GMT

BY

Tue, 03 Oct 2017 - 01:41 GMT

Hasm movement logo - official Twitter account

Hasm movement logo - official Twitter account

CAIRO – 3 October 2017: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy urges the U.S. administration to officially label the nascent Muslim Brotherhood offshoot Hasm (which translates to Decisiveness) movement as a terrorist group, along with Liwa’ al-Thawra (the Revolution Brigade).

In a report published on October 2, Eric Trager, the Middle East analyst and fellow at Washington Institute, said that the group has increasingly posed a “more formidable threat, in both ability and intent,” citing their recent attack on Cairo-based Myanmar Embassy.

Hasm is openly linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, a group which is deemed illegal in Egypt.

“The recent rhetoric and operations of such groups are compounding Egypt's security challenges in the Nile Valley, where Islamic State affiliates have been increasingly active,” the report said, calling on the U.S. government to cooperate with its Egyptian counterpart to undermine their expansion and obliterate them.

Hasm's beginnings lurk back to July 2016, when the group issued their first online rhetoric claiming responsibility for the killing of a senior policeman named Mahmoud Abdel Hamid in Fayoum. Hamid was the head of the investigations department in Fayoum’s Tamya district.

The report also suggests that the MB-affiliated group could follow the trail of al-Qaeda group, which means that the U.S. has to factor in the group’s potential heightened scope of danger.

“Al-Qaeda-aligned media outlets have promoted Hasm’s statements since late 2016,” Trager stated.

Since its beginnings, Hasm has maintained a strategy of specifically targeting policemen, rather than civilians. The group’s members have been involved in attacking several checkpoints and killing policemen stationed in them. Their most recent attack took place on July 7; where they targeted a police van and left one police officer and three recruits dead in Giza.

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