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Al-Ahram Weekly 22 - 28 June 2000 Issue No. 487 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 22 - 28 June 2000 Issue No. 487
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Focus Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Prison mail
By Jailan HalawiThe leadership of the underground Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiya appears to be divided over a statement issued by Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman -- the group's spiritual leader -- reportedly declaring that he had withdrawn his support for a cease-fire initiative launched nearly three years ago. From his US prison cell, Abdel-Rahman was quoted by his American lawyer, Lynne Stewart, as saying, "I'm withdrawing my support for the cease-fire initiative, for it is clear that the government is still pursuing its old ways." Abdel-Rahman is serving a life sentence in a US prison for conspiracy to blow up New York city landmarks.
The lawyer said on 14 June that Abdel-Rahman retracted his backing for the unilateral truce initiated by Gama'a leaders jailed near Cairo. Expatriate leaders later embraced the truce after the November 1997 Luxor massacre that left 58 tourists and four Egyptians dead.
Rifa'i 4 June that June that Ahmed Taha, one of the group's expatriate leaders and founders believed to be based in Afghanistan, said the Gama'a would reconsider its position after Abdel-Rahman's announcements. "Stopping operations [attacks] is a human decision that can be cancelled if a majority of the Gama'a finds this to be in its interest, especially after the sheikh's latest instructions, in which he withdrew his support for the initiative," Taha said.
Taha argued that militant groups were never given the opportunity to become political parties. He said President Hosni Mubarak's government has never given Islamists a legal political forum. "I have repeatedly said the government will never allow the Islamist trend to play an effective political role through recognised parties," he declared. "It will not let anyone else share in the power game."
He went on to argue that revolution was the only way open for Egyptians to get rid of the government and choose their own leaders. "When the Gama'a announced a halt of armed operations, it did not say it would give up its opposition of the Egyptian government. In my view, the only way for the Islamist movement to achieve victory is for Islamist factions to unite and mobilise the Egyptian people, led by the army, clerics and university professors, in a revolution that should not stop until the regime is overthrown," he said.
But Montasser El-Zayyat, the Gama'a's Cairo lawyer and de facto spokesman denied that this was now Gama'a policy. "Taha enjoys a great deal of respect among his brothers in the Gama'a's leadership at home and abroad. Yet his expressed opinions only represent his personal views, and the Gama'a is not to be held responsible for his statements."
El-Zayyat went on to deny that Sheikh Abdel-Rahman had withdrawn his support for the cease-fire initiative, suggesting that his statement should be viewed merely as a request for the Gama'a to "re-evaluate" its decision of maintaining a unilateral cease-fire with the government.
The sheikh's letter, El-Zayyat insisted, was not intended to be published by the press. It was a personal message sent to El-Zayyat via e-mail to be delivered to the Gama'a's incarcerated leaders, he said. The letter, El-Zayyat affirmed, "did not include a single word on the sheikh's withdrawal of support for the cease-fire initiative."
He continued that the two-page letter was mainly a response to a statement made by Egypt's ambassador to Stockholm, Sameh Derar, claiming that Abdel-Rahman was being well treated at his US prison. Abdel-Rahman had repeatedly complained of ill-treatment.
In his letter, Abdel-Rahman slammed the Egyptian government for maintaining its policy of putting Islamist militants on trial before military courts, conducting mass arrests and implementing death sentances against them. Militants who had served their terms of imprisonment were being kept in detention, he claimed further.
It was in light of these charges that Abdel-Rahman called on the group's leaders to "re-evaluate the policies of the Gama'a", El-Zayyat said, and expressed his support "for those positions that best serve the interests of the group."
At a press conference held at his office Monday night, El-Zayyat said that Gama'a leaders imprisoned inside Egypt had responded to Abdel-Rahman's letter by a letter of their own in which they asked him to clarify his position on the cease-fire in order to clear up the controversy.
El-Zayyat expected that it will be quite some time before a response is received from Sheikh Abdel-Rahman due to communication restrictions at the Minnesota prison where he is being held.
"This [communication difficulties] may have led to this misunderstanding or these conflicting comments," he said.
In their letter to Abdel-Rahman, the jailed leaders informed him that the government had halted extra-judicial killings, mass arrests and military trials and that it had released some 2,500 militants, El-Zayyat said.
According to El-Zayyat, Mustafa Hamza, head of the Gama'a's Shura Council, its top body in exile, has declared that the council had taken no decision to reverse its position on the cease-fire.
The Gama'a led an insurgency in Egypt that began in 1992 and resulted in the death of more than 1,200 people, mostly militants and police, before a harsh government crackdown in 1998 practically paralysed its activities.
