6 - 12 December 2001
Issue No.563
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 6 - 12 December 2001 Issue No.563 |
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An 11 September connection?
Defendants on trial before a military court for allegedly plotting to assassinate top government officials say they were only seeking to support the Palestinian uprising, reports Khaled Dawoud
The Supreme Military Court at Haikstep military camp, northeast of Cairo, heard for the first time details of the charges brought against 94 defendants on Monday and Tuesday.
The state security officer who investigated the case told the court that the defendants plotted to assassinate President Hosni Mubarak, intending to place a bomb on one of the bridges he traverses going to and from his Heliopolis residence. According to the officer, whose name and rank cannot be revealed for security reasons, the defendants were also planning to assassinate Defence Minister Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Sheikh Mohamed Sayed Tantawi.
But the defendants' list of targets did not end there, claimed the officer, adding that it included several intellectuals, entertainers and businessmen whom extremists accuse of contravening Islam or expressing non-Islamic views. Among the names on the list were prominent feminist writer Nawal El-Saadawi, script writer and columnist Wahid Hamed, film director Inas El- Degheidi, prominent businessman Naguib Sawiris and a top state security official whose name was not revealed.
The officer said that defendants Mohamed Hisham and Magdi Idris brought an explosives "expert" to Egypt to train four of the group's leaders in making and setting bombs. Omar Hegayev, a citizen of Daghestan, allegedly provided the training at an apartment in one of the city's suburbs, said the officer.
Also on the group's agenda, claimed the officer, were attacks on strategic buildings in Cairo, including an apartment used by US military experts in the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis.
The defendants, said the officer, aimed "to overthrow the regime and seize power by means of [terrorist] operations."
The majority of the defendants were arrested in May and kept in detention on the authority of the Emergency Law, in force since 1981. They include three men from Daghestan, a Palestinian with a Yemeni passport and three Egyptians who are dual nationals of Germany, the Netherlands and the United States.
More arrests were made following the 11 September attacks against the United States, fuelling speculation that the government's decision to refer defendants to a military court in mid- October was linked to the US-led anti-terror campaign. Investigators said that all defendants were members of a previously unknown group, called "Al-Wa'ad" or the promise. And according to their lawyers, the majority were not known to have links with the major armed militant groups, such as Al- Gama'a Al-Islamiya or Al- Jihad.
Hafez Abu-Se'eda, a lawyer representing one of the defendants and secretary- general of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR), said claims that the defendants plotted to assassinate government officials were baseless. "I attended interrogations when the case came up in May and, at that time, there was no mention of plots to assassinate top officials," he explained.
Abu-Se'eda added that the case initially centered on claims that the defendants, led by Sheikh Nashaat Ibrahim, a prominent mosque preacher in Nasr City, were collecting money and donations to support the ongoing Palestinian uprising.
Abu-Se'eda pointed out that the original charge of collecting donations without government permission is punishable by imprisonment, but "the new charges of joining an illegal organisation and seeking to assassinate top officials are punishable by death."
The state security officer who testified before the court at Haikstep confirmed for the first time reports that some defendants, led by Sheikh Ibrahim, attempted to smuggle weapons to the militant Palestinian group Hamas. "Some of the defendants said during interrogation that they were seeking to smuggle certain types of weapons needed by Hamas," Abu-Se'eda told Al-Ahram Weekly.
The state security officer said leaders of the group also raised funds to send young militants to troubled areas in Chechnya and Kosovo where they would receive paramilitary training and then return home to launch terrorist attacks.
Two defendants said they were arrested simply because they received training in the United States to become commercial pilots. In the 11 September attacks, civilian airliners were hijacked and crashed by suicidal pilots against the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.
A number of lawyers complained to the court on Monday that several paragraphs had been deleted from the dossier of the interrogations which was given to them. They claimed that this was done intentionally to hide the fact that the defendants were simply a group of people seeking to provide assistance to Palestinians and Chechens.
"The testimony given by the police officer on Monday and Tuesday was unbelievable," Abu-Se'eda said. "He claimed that in one month he carried out all investigations single-handed and managed to arrest nearly 90 defendants."
Seven defendants are being tried in absentia.
Sheikh Ibrahim, who tops the list of those on trial, reiterated on Monday his denial that he was involved in terrorist activities. "In all my sermons over the past 27 years, I never supported the use of violence against the government," he told reporters from the iron dock in the courtroom.
Mohamed Hisham Youssef, a US-Egyptian citizen, alleged that he was tortured, and told reporters that the US embassy in Cairo "did not give a damn" about him.
"The security forces would not have treated me the way they did had they not known that the American consulate did not give a damn," AFP quoted Youssef as saying.
The military court, whose sentences cannot be appealed and are subject to ratification by the president, is scheduled to resume hearings today.
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