Libyan militant involved in Wahat attack to be detained for 15 days

CAIRO – 17 November 2017: Egypt’s Attorney General ordered Friday the arrest of the recently captured Libyan militant over involvement in the Wahat attack in Giza to 15 days pending investigations.

The decision includes 14 more defendants accused of same charges that left 16 policemen dead and 13 wounded in confrontations between security forces and militants on Oct. 20.

The captured militant, Abdel Rahim Mohamed Abdullah Al-Mismary, was the only survivor of the security raid that tracked fleeing terrorists in the Western Desert near the terror attack scene and left 15 militants dead.

He was interviewed on Thursday by Egyptian TV channel Al-Hayat, where he revealed incidents of the operation.

In the Thursday’s interview, Al-Mismary, a 25-year-old resident of Libya's Derna, said that he adopted the Salafi Jihad ideology amid the spread of Islamist groups in his hometown following the 2011 Libyan Revolution.

Al-Mismary added that he joined the Shura Council of Mujahideen in Derna in late 2014 along with few neighbors. It was an umbrella organization of Derna-based Islamist factions opposed to the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group and the Libyan army, led by Khalifa Haftar.

He pointed out that he participated in planting IEDs that targeted IS militants and Haftar’s troops in Derna, describing his enemies as “infidels.”