Egyptian Minister of Interior Magdy Abdel-Ghafar said Friday (March 23rd) that from 2014 to 2017 Egyptian security forces arrested 19,108 terrorist elements with huge quantities of weapons and ammunitions, Egypt's Ahram Online reported.
In his first interview with the press, Abdel-Ghafar also revealed that terror attacks notably decreased from 481 in 2014, to only 22 in 2017.
He added that in the previous four years, Egyptian security forces, in co-operation with domestic and foreign security services, conducted pre-emptive security operations that enabled them to destroy 992 terrorist hideouts.
The operations also led to confiscating 2,322 weapons and hundreds of thousands of pieces of munitions, as well as 1,511 explosive belts and explosive devices.
"All procedures are done in accordance with the constitution and law as well human rights principles," he said.
Abdel-Ghafer also announced that a new department was founded to fight human trafficking.
He said that from 2017 till today, 103 cases of undocumented immigration were foiled in Egypt, as well as 361 cases of illegal border crossing.
The phenomenon of undocumented migration by sea from Egyptian shores has stopped thanks to a 2016 law that criminalised such activities with penalties ranging from a fine of 200,000 Egyptian pounds ($11,350) to life imprisonment, he said.
