Judicial officials said that an Egyptian court on Saturday referred the papers of Hisham Ashmawi, a former officer who had adopted terrorist thought, and 36 others to the mufti after being convicted of terrorism.
Ashmawi was arrested in the city of Derna in eastern Libya in late 2018 and the authorities loyal to Khalifa Haftar, commander of the Eastern Libya Forces (Libyan National Army), handed him over to Egypt where he was transferred to in May last year.
A military court had said in a statement that Ashmawi was convicted of several crimes, including masterminding an attack in 2014 that killed 22 border guards near the border with Libya, and involvement in an assassination attempt on a former interior minister in 2013.
The statement added that Ashmawi led the so-called "Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis Group" stationed in Sinai, the most dangerous militant group in Egypt, before the group pledged allegiance to the "ISIS terrorist" organization in 2014.
Today, Saturday, the court ruled to convict the 36 other defendants accused of terrorism, and the court set the date for a new session on the second of next March to pronounce the ruling after consulting the Mufti’s opinion.
Last November, a military court sentenced Ashmawi to death in another terrorist case. Egyptian civil and military courts had sentenced Ashmawi in absentia to death before his extradition.