An accusation by Egypt’s interior minister on Sunday that members of the Muslim Brotherhood carried out the assassination of the country’s chief prosecutor has highlighted a simmering debate about the credibility and conduct of Egypt’s security apparatus as it grapples with ongoing attacks by militants. The interior minister, Maj. Gen. Magdi Abdel-Ghaffar said at a news conference that members of the Islamist group had carried out the bombing that killed chief prosecutor Hisham Barakat last June, following training by the Palestinian armed group Hamas in the Gaza Strip, in coordination with exiled Brotherhood leaders living in Turkey.

The accusation comes at a moment when Egypt’s embattled interior ministry is already facing heightened scrutiny as a result of high-profile accusations of abuses by the security forces. In February activists accused the security forces of killing an Italian doctoral student who disappeared from central Cairo in late January, and whose body was found with marks of torture. The student’s killing, along with a separate case in which a police officer shot dead a driver on the street in Cairo, has renewed calls from human rights groups, Egyptian media and lawmakers for reform of Egypt’s vast police and security apparatus, a set of institutions that represent the legacy of decades of autocratic rule. Analysts say that those controversies and others will likely increase international skepticism of the ministry’s account of the killing.