Kuwait has officially announced extraditing members of the "Muslim Brotherhood", who were arrested last Friday, to Egypt to be handed over to authorities.
Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled al-Jarallah said Sunday defendants had been deported to Cairo in line with a 2017 extradition agreement between the two countries. He stressed that his country has cooperated with the Egyptian authorities in this regard.
“Kuwaiti-Egyptian security coordination and cooperation is very significant.. and this cooperation will continue with the brothers in Egypt, and we agree with them that both countries’ security is integral,” Jarallah explained.
Sources said members of the cell had been handed down verdicts by the Egyptian judiciary, indicating some of the detainees had been sentenced to 15 years in prison in their home country.
Whereabouts of the fugitives, who had escaped from the Egyptian authorities to Kuwait, were located and they were arrested. During interrogations, they confessed carrying out terrorist operations in Egypt.
Kuwait doesn’t classify the Muslim Brotherhood as a “terrorist organization,” unlike other Gulf states, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and Arab countries headed by Egypt, which classified it as a banned terrorist organization during the period between 2013 and 2014.
Existence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Kuwait dates back to the early 1960s. It operates in Kuwait through the Social Reform Society, which was established in June 1963, and its political arm, the Islamic Constitutional Movement, which has become parliamentary active since the beginning of the 1980s and formed a major bloc.
According to sources, clamping out this cell in Kuwait was the result of investigations conducted by the Egyptian authorities with Hisham Ashmawi, who has been recently handed over by Libya to Egypt and is accused of terrorism.
They said charges against the cell’s eight members included disobedience, demonstrations and riots as well as terrorist acts in Cairo and Fayoum, including being involved in the assassination of Egyptian Attorney General Hisham Barakat in 2015.
