The Brotherhood Says It Will Take Washington to Court, and One Outlet Reports It

Middle East Online reported that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood rejected the 23 July sanctions in a statement issued by its London-based leadership, describing them as unjust and unsupported by legal evidence, and saying the movement would challenge the designation through US courts and pursue all available legal avenues to halt implementation and defend the rights of the organisation and its members. This desk could not locate the underlying statement on the Brotherhood’s ikhwanonline.com or on its Freedom and Justice portal, fj-p.com, and found no second outlet carrying it. What is on the record is the action it responds to: the Office of Foreign Assets Control designated Mahmoud al-Abyari, a UK-based senior Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood figure whom Treasury identifies as Secretary General of the Muslim Brotherhood General Secretariat, for acting for or on behalf of the EMB, designated a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in January.

The gap between the announcement and any legal event is the whole of this story. A designated person has two routes: an administrative delisting petition to OFAC, which is slow and largely invisible until it succeeds, and a suit in US federal court, which generates a docket number the same day it is filed. Neither has surfaced. Anyone litigating would be arguing against a record Treasury says was built with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration and Customs and Border Protection, and against OFAC’s specific claim that al-Abyari supported fundraising for Filistin Vakfi and Hayat Yolu, two entities already sanctioned over Hamas ties. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent framed the action in categorical terms: “Whether operating under the guise of charities, businesses, or underground financial networks, those who enable Hamas will be exposed, sanctioned, and held accountable.”

Assessment: Treat this as an intention reported by one outlet, not a case. Press statements cost nothing and serve an audience of members and donors who need to hear that the leadership is not simply absorbing the blow. A filing is different: it puts the movement’s structure, its finances and its relationship to the General Secretariat into an adversarial process it does not control, and it requires naming a plaintiff with standing. Watch for a docket, not a communiqué. And note the venue nobody is discussing — al-Abyari lives in Britain, where the group is not banned and where London has still said nothing.