CAIRO
An Egyptian court on Monday issued a ruling obliging the government to consider the Muslim Brotherhood, the group from which ousted president Mohamed Morsi hails, a "terrorist" group.
"The government is obliged to implement the ruling, which makes it necessary for it to issue a new law and not depend solely on its earlier, challengeable order designating the Brotherhood as a terrorist group," Samir Sabri, the lawyer who filed the case, told Anadolu Agency.
Last December, the government officially designated the Brotherhood a "terrorist group" following the deadly bombing of a Nile Delta security headquarters that killed 16 people, mostly policemen.
At the time, Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim linked the attack to the Brotherhood and the Ansar Beit al-Maqdis militant group, the latter of which claimed responsibility for the bombing.
The Brotherhood, by contrast, denied involvement in the attack, which it denounced as an "act of terror."
Meanwhile, another court rejected an appeal against a September ruling dissolving the Brotherhood and freezing its assets.
"We expected the appeal to be rejected," Brotherhood lawyer Hassan Saleh told AA.
Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected leader, was removed by the military last July after only one year in office following mass protests against his presidency.
The ousted president currently faces three separate trials for alleged jailbreak, espionage and incitement to murder.
A fourth trial, in which he faces charges of "insulting" Egypt's judiciary, is yet to begin.
Morsi, for his part, along with all of his co-defendants, dismisses the charges against him as politically motivated.
The Egyptian authorities have unleashed a massive crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood since the bloody dispersal last summer of two protest camps staged by Morsi supporters in which hundreds of demonstrators were killed by security forces.
englishnews@aa.com.tr
