- Local Name: N/a
- Transliteration: N/a
- Alternatives: N/a
- Status: 2004 – 2009 (Defeated)
- Conflicts: Egyptian Islamist Militancy
The Mansoura Jihad Cells [MJC] was an informal Islamist militant outfit active in Egypt’s Dakahliya governorate during the mid to late 2010s. It grew out of the Salafi community that had grown around local Salafi preacher Hisham Abu Sa’ad in the village of Khayariya, near Mansoura, since the mid-1990s.1 Abu Sa’ad served as the MJC’s spiritual leader while his longtime deputy Mohammed Ramadan managed its affairs.2 The group was made up of more than two dozen operatives, many of whom had received higher education.3 The MJC was funded through charitable donations by supporters and the contributions of its members.4 The group was sometimes described as an offshoot of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad Movement [EIJ], although no evidence of connections between the two entities were uncovered.5 The MJC was also alleged to be in contact with unidentified foreign jihadis.6
The MJC was formed in 2004 when Abu Sa’ad, Ramadan and associate Khalid Hamdi decided to raise funds for jihadis based in Afghanistan and militants fighting against Israel.7 The men soon became convinced of the necessity to wage jihad in Egypt. They discussed plans to attack tourists and wanted to strike at the Coptic Christian community.8 MJC operatives started learning surveillance techniques and began physical fitness training.9 Over the following years, the group attracted new members and established safehouses at different locations across northern Egypt.10 The MJC also acquired weapons and materials to make bombs.
By 2008, the MJC had resolved to attack American warships traveling on the Suez Canal, a Jewish shrine in the Beheira governorate, a General Motors factory near Giza and the provincial security headquarters in Mansoura.11 It set up a monitoring station at the waterway.12 That year, the MJC also formed two modules to manufacture rockets and to scout the targets.13 Operatives also began practicing the use of firearms at a site near Damietta.14
On Oct. 13, 2009, security forces arrested one of the MJC’s members after they had become alarmed by the group’s gatherings at a mosque in Khayariya.15 Over the next weeks, about a dozen operatives were rounded up in the Dakahliya governorate, including leaders Abu Sa’ad and Ramadan.16 Another MJC associate was apprehended in South Sinai.17 In early November, at least seventeen other members were arrested by police forces in new raids in the governorates of Dakahliya and Sharkiya.18 Cadres who had fled to Cairo were also taken into custody.19 The authorities also seized a large quantity of weapons and explosives from a house in Mit Ghamr.20 In all, dozens of people were apprehended. At least three dozen of those arrested would be released without charges in the following months and years.21
After the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, supporters of the MJC put pressure on the interim military authorities to release the militants from prison. In mid-March, they blocked a highway and staged a sit-in protest at the regional government headquarters in Mansoura.22 The army freed more than twenty MJC operatives in two batches before the end of the month.23 Abu Sa’ad and Ramadan were among those freed. The released militants were enthusiastically greeted by thousands of supporters during celebrations in Khayariya.24 Egyptian prosecutors reopened the case in 2013. By then, the vast majority of those implicated in the MJC had fled Egypt, including most of the group’s key operatives.25 In March 2014, 26 members of the MJC were sentenced in absentia to death.26 On Feb. 06, 2016, eight of the defendants in custody were sentenced to ten years in prison following a retrial.27
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