The secret files of the Muslim Brotherhood – Episode (9)

These series of articles are determined to shed the light on the crimes and dark history of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood organization.

In this article, we reveal certain details and secrets regarding the assassination of Judge Ahmed al-Khazindar, who was shot and killed by Muslim Brotherhood members in March 1948.

In his book ‘Oddities from the age of Farouk and the beginning of the Egyptian revolution’, Aḥmed Murtaḍa Al-Maraghi says judge Khazindar possessed an abundant knowledge and a solid integrity.

Al-Maraghi held many important political positions in the late era before the July 23, 1952 revolution, including assuming the position of Minister of Interior and Minister of War after he was the governor of Alexandria then Suez.

The Egypt Criminal Court was held headed by Al-Khazindar to try a group of Muslim Brotherhood members who were accused of possessing explosives and weapons.

The same case was being looked into by several other judicial bodies, however, no conclusion was reached as everyone looking into the case was being threatened by the terrorist group. 

Al-Khazindar insisted on looking into the case despite of the threats he received, either through written messages or phone calls.

The judge finally decided to sentence the defendants to life in prison, others combined with prison labor sentences. This is when the bloody group decided to assassinate him.

Khazindar left his home in Helwan on a sunny winter day after he bid farewell to his wife, kissed his two children goodbye and headed to the railway station to take the train.

About fifty meters away from his home, two young people, one of them has 19 years old while the other one 18 years old, jumped him and shot him dead with six bullets.

The two young men fled towards the mountain surrounding Helwan but a passer-by saw them and rushed to inform the police.

The judge’s wife heard the sound of the shots, and her heart felt that something happened to her husband, due to the number of threats that he had received.

She immediately got out of the house barefoot to notice a gathering of people near he house, so she ran towards them to check what happened, only to find her dead husband, soaked in his blood.

The policemen busted the two young men and began interrogating them in the Helwan department.

As Maraghi went to the station to interrogate them, he found they were so calm with smiles on their faces. As he recalls, one was a big tall man, while the other one was thin and short.

The two suspects were keen to evade all the questions asked to them, as they even denied knowing Al-Khazindar

Maraghi said the two men kept telling each other jokes and laughing out loud, describing how the Muslim Brotherhood is a cold-blooded organization that admits no value to life.

In his book ‘Dots Above Letters’, which tales the history of the Muslim Brotherhood and their bloody history, Muslim Brotherhood Special Apparatus leader Ahmed Adel Kamal recalls that the Muslim Brotherhood considered Khazindar was a sword that would keep cutting the limps of the organization off.

Adel said his killing was hold off because they wanted to gather all the information and details about his residence and usual routes.

He also recalls that Hassan Abdelhafez and Mahmoud Saeed Zeinhom were chosen to carryout the assassination, so they monitored his activities for two days and then killed him.

Adel said that as Khazindar got out from his house and started taking some steps, he was approached by Hassan who shot three bullets at him, that probably did not hit him, so Mahmoud went to Khazindar to carry him and put him to the ground, then Hassan continued shooting him.

The interrogation took a long time as well as the trial, and Hassan demonstrated sings of a nervous ailment and was referred to the Abbasid Mental Hospital, there were reports and discussions about his illness and the extent of his criminal responsibility in light of the situation.

The surprise was that the Muslim Brotherhood was planning to get the two killers out of prison through a detailed plan that included sedated meals for the prison guards and copies of the prison keys, but the “Jeep case”, in which a number of Muslim Brotherhood members were arrested while transferring weapons, classified documents and explosives in a Jeep, prevented the escape scheme from being carried out.