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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 - 10 May 2000 Issue No. 480 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 - 10 May 2000 Issue No. 480
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Special Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Farewell to terrorism
By Khaled Dawoud
At a news conference on Saturday, Interior Minister Habib El-Adli said that he was committed to the policy of the gradual release of suspected militants who renounce their extremist ideology and express willingness to be re-integrated into society.
"The release [of groups of suspected militants] takes place any time. There are no specific dates. Anybody who has definitely given up his extremist ideas is released immediately," El-Adli said. He added that he "did not mind releasing detainees any day, and we do not have to wait for an occasion [such as religious feasts or national festivals] to allow them to return to their families."
Since he took office following the Luxor massacre of November 1997, in which 58 tourists and four Egyptians were killed, El-Adli has adopted what observers describe as a new security strategy. While tightening the grip on the few remaining hideouts of the Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiya, El-Adli quietly kicked off the process of releasing thousands of suspected militants, some of them held for years under the emergency law without being charged or put on trial. El-Adli's predecessors also used to release "repentant" militants, but this was usually accompanied by a press and media campaign, taking reporters to prisons to listen to each of the released prisoners declaring in public that he no longer belonged to a militant group. For militants, that was a humiliating process and was not necessarily instrumental in defusing the confrontation between the government and suspected terrorists.
El-Adli's policy was enforced after it became clear to security authorities that locking up thousands of militants did not necessarily help in solving the problem. In several state security and military court hearings, prosecutors said that orders to carry out terrorist attacks were given to extremists from behind bars by their jailed leaders. Gathering thousands of suspects in over-crowded prisons was also like providing leaders with the opportunity to run their own cadre schools, turning young men into hard-line militants.
El-Adli's statements came a few days before the US State Department issued its annual report on world terrorism, noting that the situation had remarkably improved in Egypt, without a single terrorist attack announced in 1999. The report attributed this achievement to the interior ministry's new security strategy, including the release of thousands of prisoners and the unilateral cease-fire declared by Al-Gama'a in July 1997.
El-Adli left Cairo for Tunis on Tuesday to take part in a conference of Arab interior ministers. Cooperation in confronting terrorist groups will top the agenda of the meeting. In addition to his successful security strategy, El-Adli was also credited for his close cooperation with Arab and European countries. This resulted in the hand-over to Egypt of some of the most wanted militants who had lived abroad for years, plotting anti-government attacks and collecting funds to finance terrorist activities back home.
