The former editor of the Muslim Brotherhood’s website accused the group Tuesday of attempting to assassinate him.

Anonymous gunmen fired at Abdel Gelil al-Sharnouby’s car on Monday night on the ring road near Qalyubiya.

Sharnouby resigned from the Muslim Brotherhood news website Ikhwan Online in May 2011 after group leaders criticized the site’s coverage of a demonstration against pardoning ousted President Hosni Mubarak.

The group did not participate in the demonstration, which other revolutionary forces had called for. Sharnouby said at that time he sided with the group at the expense of objectivity and professionalism.

Sharnouby told the public prosecution Tuesday that he held the group responsible for the shooting, which he described as “deliberate.” Sharnouby said the assassination attempt came because of his opposition to the current rulers’ views.  

Sharnouby said the Muslim Brotherhood is the only group he has a dispute with, after his resignation from the group and the website last year.

He added he spent nearly 29 years as member of the Muslim Brotherhood and seven years as editor of Ikhwan Online and a spokesperson for the group.

Mahmoud Hussein, secretary general of the Muslim Brotherhood, said Sharnouby’s accusation was baseless, assuring that Sharnouby himself knows his claims are false.

Hussein added, in a statement to state-run Al-Ahram, “Assassinations are not the way of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Sharnouby himself knows that.”

“If assassination was the Brotherhood method, [former Interior Minister] Habib al-Adly and his men who tortured group members would have been more deserving of such an act [than Sharnouby],” Hussein added.

Edited translation from MENA