US designates Egyptian Muhammad Jamal as terrorist entities

The US State Department designated on Monday the Muhammad Jamal Network (MJN) and its Egyptian founder Muhammad Jamal as Specially Designated Global Terrorists for their involvement in terror activities. The State Department said in a statement that Jamal learned how to construct bombs in Afghanistan in the late 1980s when he was training with the al-Qaida terror group. Upon returning to Egypt in the 1990s, he became a top military commander and head of the operational wing of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, then headed by al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. Jamal, who has been arrested many times and incarcerated for years in Egypt, has developed connections with al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, al-Qaida senior leadership, and al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) leadership, including Nasir 'Abd-al-Karim' Abdullah al-Wahishi and Qasim Yahya Mahdi al-Rimi, the statement said. Jamal formed the MJN after he was released from Egyptian prison in 2011 and established several terrorist training camps in Egypt and Libya. The AQAP has provided funding to the MJN and Jamal has used the AQAP network to smuggle fighters into training camps, the statement said. It also noted that "suicide bombers have trained at MJN training camps, and Jamal established links with terrorists in Europe." Jamal was re-arrested by Egyptian authorities in November 2012 because his confiscated computer contained letters to al-Zawahiri in which Jamal asked for assistance and described MJN's activities, it added.The designations authorize sanctions against the named individuals and groups, including barring US citizens from doing business with them, and freezing their assets under US jurisdiction.