Soldiers of God (Jihadi Entity, Egypt)

• Local Name: جند الله
• Transliteration: Jund Allah (Gundallah)
• Alternatives: N/a
• Status: 2002 – 2003 (Defeated)
• Conflicts: Islamist Militancy in Egypt

The Soldiers of God [GA; Jund Allah] was a Cairo-based Salafi Islamist outfit that was briefly active in the early 2000s. Little is known about the group due the government’s reluctance to share its insights. Approximately fifty people were thought to have been associated with the GA.¹ Most of these individuals are said to have been affluent and well-educated. The outfit was headed by Ihab Ismail.² Other senior operatives of the GA were former air force officer Tarek Abu Azzam, Mohammed al-Daraj, Izat al-Najjar, Mohammed Basiouni and Hamza al-Hanawi, the son of a senior member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad Organization [EIJ].³

The GA was likely formed somewhere in 2002. The outfit acquired weapons and plotted attacks against the American and Israeli embassies in Egypt.⁴ Some of the GA’s members allegedly volunteered to carry out suicide attacks in Israel but failed to enter the Jewish state.⁵

The Egyptian authorities rolled up the GA between October 2002 and January 2003. In all, more than forty people associated with the outfit were apprehended.⁶ All senior operatives of the group were among those arrested. At least eighteen jailed GA militants launched a hunger strike in June 2005 to protest torture and the conditions of their detention. The action ended only after the authorities met some of the strikers’ demands.⁷

Some of the GA militants were released from prison by the interim military authorities in the aftermath of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. Tarek Abu Azzam was among those freed. He immediately linked up with the al-Qa’ida affiliated Mohammed Jamal Network [MJN] and the Nassr City Cell [NCC].⁸ The current status of other senior GA members is unknown.