...also in our archives as Hesham El-Ashmawy and Hisham el-Ashmawi, he took the nom de guerre Abu Omar El-Mohager (the immigrant). El-Ashmawy was thrown out of Egyptian special forces in 2011 for extremism. He went on to help found Ansar Bayt Al Maqdis, then the local branch of Al Qaeda, with whom he shared the results of his military training. When they became ISIS in the Sinai, he left for the Western Desert to form the Al Qaeda-linked al-Mourabitoun. At some point they wandered into Libya, where in 2018 the LNA caught him and sent him back. Egypt had convicted Mr. Ashmawy in absentia in 2014, leaving very little for the courts to do — though they nonetheless did it all over again. And now he is discovering whether or not he was right about what Allah wanted him to do... |