[JURIST] The Cairo Court for Urgent Matters [official backgrounder] ruled Saturday that the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas [official website] is a terrorist organization. The decision was based on lawsuits [Daily News Egypt report] alleging that Hamas is responsible for multiple attacks against Egyptian security forces, which have resulted in casualties and deaths. Hamas official Mushir al-Masri condemned the decision [AP report], calling it “a coup against history and an Egyptian abuse of the Palestinian cause and resistance, which fights on behalf of the Arab nation.” Hamas is an offshoot of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.

Political conflict in Egypt has been ongoing since the ouster of former president Mohammad Morsi [BBC backgrounder] in 2013, and political backlash has been particularly strong against his Muslim Brotherhood [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] party. Last Saturday an Egyptian court considered a lawsuit urging the court to declare Turkey to be a “state that supports terrorism” [JURIST report] following statements by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that supported the Muslim Brotherhood and criticized Egypt’s current government. Last month the Cairo Court for Urgent Matters banned and declared Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the armed branch of Hamas, to be a terrorist group [JURIST report]. Egypt’s interim government in December of 2013 officially declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group [JURIST report]. Egypt has faced criticism for its mass death sentences of Muslim Brotherhood supporters, including sentencing 648 people to death [JURIST report] last April.