Amid an American Congressional debate about whether or not to treat the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, Egyptian security has declared that Brotherhood agents carried out the assassination-by-car-bomb of Egypt’s public prosecutor, Hisham Barakat.  The Brotherhood certainly had the motive:  as prosecutor, Barakat froze much of their public financing and pursued charges against Brotherhood members aggressively for their role in attempting to throw out Egypt’s constitution and replace it with sharia law following their ascension to power in the wake of the Arab Spring.  Eight others were injured in the fatal bombing that claimed his life.

Egypt has made six arrests in the case, and has televised the confessions of the Brotherhood members, who are thought to have sought aid from the terrorist organization Hamas in carrying out the attack.  Hamas itself was formerly a Palestinian chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood.  Al-Arabiya news reports:

A video of their confessions was shown at the conference. According to Egyptian newspaper Youm7, the terrorist cell consisted of 48 members.  Fourteen members, most of whom graduated from Al-Azhar, participated in the assassination….   The organization is no stranger to this kind of terrorism, starting from the assassination of Judge Ahmad al-Khazindar during the reign of King Faruq.

Hamas is also an expert in special operations of that kind, specifically in Egypt, where it worked with Lebanese movement Hezbollah to exploit the country’s uprising and security the day President Hosni Mubarak was ousted, when prisons were stormed and prisoners escaped.

The involvement of Palestinian Islamist extremists has proved to be a constant element in the most infamous terrorist operations in Egypt, starting from the days of Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna.

Hamas denied involvement in a statement to the New York Times.  Western academics played down the likelihood of the Brotherhood being involved.   “Many analysts speculate the most likely culprits behind the assassination were rogue pro-MB [Muslim Brotherhood] elements—but that doesn’t mean the Egyptian Ministry of Interior’s latest release will be taken particularly seriously,” says H.A. Hellyer.  Hamas itself was also long described as a rogue, breakaway faction of the Brotherhood.  Academic analysts aside, it may be time to question whether the violent terrorism that “rogue, pro-Brotherhood” factions bring to bear is really “rogue” at all.

Even the most pro-Brotherhood academics are forced to admit that the Brotherhood’s claim to be a “firewall” against violence is badly damaged by the events since the Arab Spring.  Marc Lynch, a political scientist attempting such a defense, admits that the Brotherhood took up arms in an attempt to seize power in Egypt but, he says, so did “virtually everyone else.”  He also admits that “[a]ll three of the key mechanisms by which the firewall operated have now dramatically eroded.”

Like many American academics, Lynch favors rebuilding and reinforcing the Brotherhood so that it can play a renewed “firewall” role against violence in the Islamic World.  The Egyptian government begs to differ on the wisdom of that move.  These trials may shed some light on which claim is correct.