Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb has decided to strip an officer from the Palestinian militant faction Hamas of his Egyptian citizenship, citing his affiliation with “a foreign entity working to undermine the economic and social system of the country”.
Wael al-Awor, 45, is an officer with Hamas’s homeland security forces. He was granted Egyptian citizenship in 2012 under former president and Hamas ally Mohamed Morsi because his mother was Egyptian.
Egyptian courts are still considering lawsuits that demand Hamas be branded a terrorist group.
Egyptian authorities and allied media outlets have accused Hamas of assisting terrorist attacks across Egypt, particularly in the Sinai Peninsula, where hundreds of army and police personnel have been killed since Morsi’s ouster in 2013.
Hamas is viewed as the Palestinian offshoot of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, which Egypt already lists as a terrorist organization.
A number of Hamas members are standing trial in absentia for plotting attacks on Egyptian prisons during the 2011 uprising.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
