A Cairo court rolls the Brotherhood’s terrorist listing forward five more years, with 37 names attached

The decision, published in the Official Gazette and reported by Arabic outlets including Kech24 and Alhadath Center, keeps the Muslim Brotherhood on Egypt’s terrorist-entities register for a further five years and renews the individual listings of 37 people. Asharq Al-Awsat reported a renewal of the classification on 25 October; the Arabic reporting does not establish whether that and the early-November gazette entry are the same judicial act at two stages or two separate rulings, and nothing in the record settles it. Egypt has run these listings in five-year tranches since the group was first placed on the register, including a January 2021 Cairo court ruling covering the organisation and acting Supreme Guide Mahmoud Ezzat. In March 2026 the regime hardened at the edges: the Gazette published a decision by Counselor Tarek Abu Zeid, head of the office regulating terrorist entities and lists, permanently adding Ezzat and Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh.

The Egyptian framing is explicitly procedural. Colonel Hatem Saber, described by Youm7 — an outlet close to the Egyptian state — as an expert in countering international terrorism, said on 4 November that the Brotherhood file remains open before state institutions, that it is handled along legal tracks, and that continued listing reflects ongoing legal pursuit rather than a political announcement. That language matters because Cairo’s listings are now cited abroad. Under Executive Order 14362, signed 24 November 2025, Washington has designated four national chapters in ten months: the Lebanese, Jordanian and Egyptian branches on 13 January 2026, announced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio as “a first step,” and the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood on 9 March. The Lebanese branch, also known as al-Jamaa al-Islamiyah, was listed as both an FTO and an SDGT. Egypt’s foreign ministry welcomed the designation of its own branch.

In Strasbourg the movement is parliamentary rather than executive. On 8 October the European Parliament adopted, by 381 votes to 167 with 15 abstentions, a resolution calling for an EU strategy against Islamist entryism and Muslim Brotherhood networks, asking the Council to list linked entities where the criteria of Common Position 2001/931/CFSP are met, and demanding that organisations tied to the Council of European Muslims, including FEMYSO, be denied access to EU institutions and struck from the Transparency Register. The resolution designates nothing. The Parliament has no authority to place the Brotherhood on the EU terrorist list; that sits with the Council. Florence Bergeaud-Blackler told Focus on Western Islamism: “This is only the beginning of an awareness at the level of the European Parliament. The left-right divide is particularly strong, but the resolution passed because the centre mostly voted with the right.”

Assessment: Three jurisdictions are building the same premise — the Brotherhood as a single transnational entity — on three incompatible evidentiary standards, and each increasingly cites the others as corroboration. Cairo’s renewal adds no new finding; it refreshes a clock. Washington’s four chapter designations rest on country-specific material-support cases. Strasbourg’s vote is a recommendation with no legal effect until member states act, and they have not. Watch for the circularity: a court in Badr renewing a 2013-era listing becomes evidence in a European debate, which becomes evidence in an American filing. Treat partisan single-source claims in this space, such as the New York Sun’s unnamed “senior leader” endorsement story, as unverified.