Hesham Ashmawy

Ashmawy was born in 1978. His father, Ali Ashmawy, was a French language teacher, and his mother, Ghalia Ali Abdelmegid, worked in a school. Little information exists about his life prior to joining the Egyptian Armed Forces, though he was known by family and friends to be an association football enthusiast. He entered the Egyptian Military Academy in 1996, from which he graduated in 2000. Ashmawy was deployed to the Sinai Peninsula for 10 years, during which the 2005 Sharm el-Sheikh and 2006 Dahab bombings took place. == Radicalization and dismissal ==

Ashmawy started showing signs of extremism in 2000, when he argued with a military-assigned preacher who accidentally misread Quranic verses during a sermon. He ended up being placed under Military Intelligence surveillance as a result of the incident. Around that time, he was also distributing Salafist literature to his colleagues. after which he became depressed and started reading the works of Sunni theologian Ibn Taymiyyah. He severed ties with most of his army and SSI colleagues following the death of his friend, according to Ashmawy's nephew. He was tried in 2007 for continued incitement, and was reassigned to an administrative post in the Popular Defense Forces branch of the Egyptian military. The exact dates and circumstances under which Ashmawy left the military are conflicting. A military court hearing in 2011 decided that he should be formally dismissed from the Armed Forces. == Militancy ==

Ashmawy travelled to Turkey in April 2013 and then crossed into the Syrian border and had a meeting with ISIS commanders. He regularly visited the al-Anwar al-Muhamadiyya Mosque in Cairo's Matareya district between 2010 and 2012. Meetings between him and "extremist elements" became frequent after he left the military, according to an October 2015 episode about Ashmawy on Death Making, an Al Arabiya program. During that time, he started embracing Islamic militancy as an ideology, particularly the al-Qaeda brand. Ashmawy's name appeared in the media for the first time in September 2013, as one of the prime suspects in the attempted assassination of interior minister Mohamed Ibrahim Moustafa, the other suspects being Emad Abdel Hamid and suicide bomber Waleed Badr. which he had personally executed and previously planned while based in Ansar al-Sharia camps in Libya. and commanded the organization's cells in the Egyptian mainland. He fell out with ABM that same year, however, when it declared allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and became Wilayat Sinai. Ashmawy's mainland operations were gradually taken over by Wilayat Sinai commander Ashraf al-Gharably. Al-Mourabitoun His name resurfaced in the media as a suspect in the assassination of Prosecutor General Hisham Barakat in July 2015. to which the latter responded later on by referring to Ashmawy as an "apostate" and issuing a bounty on his life. During the same video announcement, he encouraged Muslims to wage global jihad and denounced Egypt's government and its president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Ashmawy released a second statement in March 2016 in the form of an audio communique accompanied by image slides that included a photo of him in military uniform and a panorama of Jerusalem with the words "O Aqsa, we are coming" appearing on the screen. In the message, Ashmawy called on Egyptian ulama and clerics to rally Muslim youth and encourage them "to expel the invaders from the abode of Islam and wage jihad against the criminal el-Sisi, his soldiers, and supporters." Ashmawy gave himself the nom de guerre "Abu Omar al-Mujhajir", and became associated with other militant groups like Jund al-Islam and Ansar al-Islam. The latter, which he was suspected of leading, claimed responsibility for the Bahariya Oasis attack in October 2017 that killed between 16 and 54 security personnel. His deputy, Emad Abdel Hamid, was killed in a retaliatory airstrike in Egypt's Western Desert later that month. Ashmawy, under the nickname "Abu Mohannad", was sentenced to death in absentia by a military court on 27 December 2017, along with ten other defendants, for various terrorism-related charges as part of a case called Ansar Bait al-Maqdis 3 by local media. When he was arrested the following year, Egyptian media credited him with 17 attacks, including the Barakat assassination, the 2015 Italian Consulate bombing, the Minya bus attack and the Bahariya attack, among others. "Every major attack, he either has been behind it or has been blamed for it," according to Gold. == Arrest and death ==

On 8 October 2018, Ahmed al-Mismari, spokesman of the Libyan National Army (LNA), announced the capturing of Ashmawy during a surprise operation by a unit of the 106th Mujahfal Brigade in the mountainous al-Maghar district of Derna. Other militants were also captured, as well as the family of Omar Sorour, al-Mourabitoun's mufti who was killed earlier in June. They were later taken to a barracks in the port city. Nasser Ahmed al-Najdi, commander of the LNA's Battalion 169, told Asharq Al-Awsat that the operation was the result of intelligence sharing between Egypt's government and the LNA under the command of General Khalifa Haftar, months after a tunnel network was uncovered in Derna during a battle between LNA forces and the Shura Council of Mujahideen for control of the city. The LNA, which fights for the eastern government in the Libyan Civil War, believed that Ashmawy was using that network to move around between cities in the region. According to Najdi, "not a single bullet was fired" during the "successful" operation, The Libyan authorities said in their statement that Ashmawy would be extradited to Egypt following investigations. An earlier statement added that he was wearing an explosive belt that failed to detonate when the troops closed in on him. Mismari announced on 1 November that Ashmawy was being tried by a military court in eastern Libya, along with over 200 defendants. He added that Ashmawy took part in the fighting against the LNA in Derna and orchestrated attacks and assassinations of several Libyan officers. On 28 May 2019, Ashmawy was extradited by the Libyan National Army to Egyptian authorities. On March 4, 2020, Ashmawy's death sentence was carried out. == References ==