US Senator Ted Cruz will join experts and other lawmakers for a congressional panel next week that will push for designating the Muslim Brotherhood group as a terrorist organisation.
The 20 June panel aims to discuss bills introduced by Cruz and house representative Mario Diaz-Balart to make the designation, said a Tuesday statement by event organiser American Pulse, an Egyptian media company that produces a weekly TV programme from New York.
The panel will demand “investigating [the Brotherhood s] funding abroad to discover and catalogue trails of funding other terrorist organisations like ISIS, Al-Shabab, Al-Qaeda and so many others,” the statement added.
Panellists will also call for investigating funding offered to US non-governmental organisations that “might be using even taxpayer money to fund terrorist activities under the direction of the Muslim Brotherhood.”
The White House said in April that US President Donald Trump s administration is pushing to designate the Brotherhood a terrorist group, a move that would bring US sanctions against the movement.
Officials in the Pentagon and State Department have raised objections to the plan, saying that the group does not meet the legal definition of a terrorist group and that the designation might have unfavourable consequences.
Egypt designated the Brotherhood a terrorist group in late 2013 following the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.
The group, founded in Egypt in 1928, maintains it is a non-violent movement and denies any connection to violent militancy.
While Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have also designated the Brotherhood a terrorist organisation, the group continues to function within mainstream government and society in other countries including Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco and Turkey.
