Cairo: A court in Egypt will hear an appeal against the terrorist tag imposed on the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas last month, according to media reports on Wednesday.
The Egypt’s State Lawsuits Authority appealed on Wednesday against the ruling by the Cairo Court of Urgent Matters in February, according to which, Hamas was a terrorist organisation, Xinhua reported.
The court made the ruling after an Egyptian lawyer filed a lawsuit last November, calling for banning Hamas and classifying it as a terrorist organisation.
“Appealing against listing Hamas as a terrorist organisation comes in accordance with the Terrorist Entity Law that assigns the general prosecutor with the determination of terrorist entities,” the State Lawsuits Authority’s spokesman Sameh al-Sayyid said in a statement on Wednesday.
The appeal against the terrorist ruling will be heard on March 28.
The Cairo Court of Urgent Matters had, in January, also listed the Al Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, as a terrorist group, in a decision following a series of attacks in Egypt’s restive Sinai Peninsula that killed at least 33 soldiers and policemen.
Reacting to the terrorist tag, Hamas said last month that the Egyptian court’s decision was a “coup on history” and added that “the decision is shocking and dangerous and directly targets the Palestinian people and their armed resistance”.
A few days before the court listed Hamas as a terrorist organisation, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi signed the Terrorist Entity Law, which defines “a terrorist entity” as any association, group or organisation that threatens national security, disrupts public transportation, assaults personal freedom of citizens, or harms social peace and national unity.
According to the law, the general prosecution could ask a criminal court to list suspects as terrorists and start their trial. The law also stipulates that any group designated as “terrorist” will be dissolved and its assets frozen.
The law was issued following the Sinai attacks.
After the ouster of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, the relations between the new Egyptian leadership and Hamas, an ally of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza, became strained.
The Egyptian authorities listed the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation in November 2013 and have been cracking down on Islamist militant groups based in the Sinai Peninsula, accusing Hamas of having links with them, which has always been denied by Hamas.
Egyptian media had accused Hamas of helping terrorists carry out a series of attacks against the Egyptian army in the Sinai Peninsula.
After Hamas had violently seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, Egypt kept the Rafah border crossing closed, except for temporarily opening it for humanitarian purposes.
In March 2014, the court banned all activities and offices of Hamas in Egypt.