Egyptian convicted top militant Hisham Ashmawy was executed by hanging on Wednesday morning, the military said in a statement.
Ashmawy was captured in the eastern Libyan city of Derna in late 2018 and was handed over to Egypt by forces loyal to commander Khalifa Haftar in May last year. He s been described as the country s most dangerous terrorist.
He was handed two death sentences after being convicted of orchestrating several high-profile terror attacks.
"Today, the death sentence by hanging was carried out on terrorist defendant Hisham Ali Ashmawi," the military said in an audio statement posted on its official Facebook page.
Ashmawy, a former Egyptian special forces officer, led Sinai-based Ansar Bayt Al-Maqdis, Egypt s most active militant group. He broke off after the group swore allegiance to the Islamist State group in late 2014.
The army said Ashmawy was convicted in 14 crimes including a prominent 2014 ambush that killed 22 Egyptian military border guards near the frontier with Libya and a failed assassination attempt on a former interior minister in 2013.
Other crimes listed include targeting ships in the Suez Canal and involvement in deadly assaults on security buildings and armoured vehicles.
Earlier this week, a criminal court sentenced Ashmawy to death after convicting him and 36 others of terrorism charges in over 50 crimes including murder of policemen. He received another death sentence in November 2019 by a military court over similar charges.
Ashmawy sneaked into Libya to join the militant Ansar Al-Sharia group and later founded a new Al-Qaeda-aligned group called Al-Mourabitoun after switching his allegiance away from the Islamic State group, the military had said earlier.
