Free Republic

Amnesty International said an analysis of an official Feb. 21 video released by the Egyptian military, trumpeting the triumphs of its northern Sinai crackdown on militants, showed one of the weapons, which can kill and maim indiscriminately. Although the video described the weapons as improvised explosive devices planted by the militants, Amnesty said, the markings on one identified it as an American-made Mk-118 anti-tank anti-personnel submunition, "which could only have been dropped by the Egyptian Air Force." Amnesty said the video showed the weapon to be "untampered with and in good condition despite its age," with an identifying number clearly...

CAIRO — The Egyptian authorities hanged 15 men on Tuesday for an attack in the Sinai Peninsula in 2013, the start of an Islamic insurgency that the military-dominated government has been battling ever since. The hangings, reported by state media, were the biggest mass execution in Egypt since six convicted jihadists were hanged in 2015. A military court found the men guilty on terrorism charges last month for an attack on a military checkpoint in which one army officer and eight soldiers were killed. That assault came amid a surge of violence that swept across Egypt after Egyptian security forces...

CAIRO — In an eerie coincidence, the EgyptAir jetliner that plunged into the Mediterranean on Thursday was once the target of political vandals who wrote in Arabic on its underside, “We will bring this plane down.” Three EgyptAir security officials said the threatening graffiti, which appeared about two years ago, had been the work of aviation workers at Cairo Airport. Playing on the phonetic similarity between the last two letters in the plane’s registration, SU-GCC, and the surname of Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, some workers also wrote “traitor” and “murderer.”