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Egypt arrests six in connection with public prosecutor killing

Barakat, 64, was killed in a auto bomb attack on June 29 in the upscale east Cairo district of Heliopolis.

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“This plot was carried out on the orders of the Muslim Brotherhood…in close coordination with Hamas, which played a very important role in the assassination of the chief prosecutor from start to finish”, Interior Minister Magdy Abdel Ghaffar told reporters.

Speaking at a press conference on Sunday, Abdel Ghaffar said Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Turkey orchestrated the assassination, while Palestine-based Hamas “provided training for militants to execute it and also took part in planning it”.

Barakat was killed by a massive bombing outside his home, in the first assassination of a senior Egyptian official in 25 years. There was no claim of responsibility for the attack at the time.

Egypt’s interior minister says the Muslim Brotherhood and the Palestinian militant group Hamas were behind the assassination of the country’s chief prosecutor in a 2015 bombing.

Most of the people arrested are believed to be students at the Al-Azhar University in Cairo, which is a Sunni Muslim institution and Egypt’s oldest degree-granting university.

Mr Abdel-Ghaffar said dozens of people had been arrested in relation to the bombing.

But the Islamic group has been held responsible by the Egyptian government for most political violence in the country over recent years.

The Brotherhood, Egypt’s main opposition movement for decades, was blacklisted as a “terrorist group” in December 2013.

Hamas is the Palestinian branch of the Brotherhood, and enjoyed warm relations with Cairo during Morsi’s brief presidency.

The crackdown, which has included restrictions on freedom of protest, has angered many opponents of Sisi who has struggled to suppress an insurgency that is raging in the Sinai Peninsula which borders Hamas-controlled Gaza.

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He said the government will use all legal methods to extradite fugitive Brotherhood members.

Policemen secure the site of a car bomb attack on the convoy of Egyptian public prosecutor Hisham Barakat near his house at Heliopolis district in Cairo