An Egyptian military court has issued preliminary death sentences for eight people convicted of attempting to assassinate President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and Saudi Arabia's former Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef in 2014. The court has referred the sentences to the country's grand mufti for his non-binding opinion, as required by Egyptian law, The court designated a session on 6 March to pronounce the preliminary verdicts for all 292 defendants in the case. The defendants were accused of assassinating three judges in North Sinai in May 2016, as well as attacking the residence of judges supervising Egypt's parliamentary elections inside a North Sinai hotel, killing two other judges, two policemen and a citizen. The defendants were also accused of staging a multi-pronged attack on the headquarters of the Army Battalion 101 Headquarters in Arish in North Sinai, which killed 30 soldiers and officers in January 2015. In November 2016, the state security prosecution referred 292 alleged members of Daesh terrorist group to a military court on charges of plotting to assassinate El-Sisi and launch terrorist attacks in the country. According to investigations carried out by the state security prosecution, the defendants plotted assassination attempts against the president, with the first in 2014 as he performed a pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, MENA reported. The attempt, which also targeted the then-Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Nayef, involved members from terrorist cells in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The prosecution did not specify how the plot was foiled. The suspects were also responsible for carrying out a number of high-profile attacks in North and South Sinai.
