Spontaneous charge
AN EGYPTIAN citizen is under investigation for alleged involvement in an attack on American soldiers in northern Kuwait. The incident, which took place on Sunday just outside a US base at Camp Udairi, left 15 soldiers injured. Lotfy El-Barbary was shot and critically injured after he reportedly charged at the soldiers with his pick-up truck.
The Egyptian Foreign Ministry, however, dismissed claims that the act was an organised terrorist one. A report by the Egyptian Embassy in Kuwait said that initial investigations indicated it was an accident. An argument had broken out between El-Barbary and the guard at the camp, upon which an angry El-Barbary reversed his vehicle abruptly into the by-standing soldiers.
El-Barbary, who worked as a mechanic at the camp, was in the vehicle with four other Egyptian workers.
Caught
in the crossfire
TWO EGYPTIANS living in Kuwait were injured in the missile attack on Kuwait City last Saturday.
Yasser Mostafa and Akram Abul-Azayem, who worked as security guards at the shopping mall that was hit, have been hospitalised with minor injuries.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher received a report on the health status of the two citizens from the Egyptian Embassy in Kuwait on Sunday.
Back
to Kuwait
ABOUT 750 Egyptians, who had fled Kuwait last week, returned there Friday on three EgyptAir flights, officials at EgyptAir said.
The flights left from Cairo and the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria after Kuwaiti authorities asked Egyptian teachers and other employees to come back ahead of the scheduled reopening of secondary schools, universities and governmental institutions on Saturday. Minister of Civil Aviation Ahmed Shafiq said that Egyptian airliners are ready to transport passengers to Kuwait or any Gulf country.
Last week, nearly 10,000 Egyptians left Kuwait following the outbreak of war and the one-week work stoppage at Kuwaiti governmental institutions. Kuwaiti airlines decided to resume flights from Kuwait Airport on Saturday.
False
alarm
SECURITY guards at a villa in Maadi where an Israeli diplomat, Margalit Geva, lives fired several shots at a car parked illegally near the villa on Monday. Police officials said there were no casualties.
An Israeli Embassy spokesman said the incident was a dispute over a parking place and that Geva was not involved. The Egyptian citizen quarreled with the guards who asked him to move his car away from the villa.
Eye witnesses said the man parked his car in front of the villa and headed towards Victoria College School to fetch his daughter. He walked back to his car slowly and the guards asked him to leave quickly, as his car was left in a non-parking area. The man did head their orders. He got into the car and attempted to run them over, leaving the guards no choice but to fire at the car.
The man fled and is now being tracked down by police.
Standing
trial
ON SATURDAY, the Cairo State Security Court resumed its hearings in the case of 23 Egyptians and three Britons accused of joining a secret, illegal group that aims to obstruct the legal system and undermine state institutions. Defendants are also charged with attempting to revive the activities of a banned group, Hizbul Tahrir or Liberation Party, that works in contradiction with the state's constitution.
Over three consecutive hearing sessions, the court reviewed reports issued by scholars from the Centre of Islamic Research, affiliated to Al-Azhar, to rule on whether the books and documents seized from the suspects contradict Islamic jurisprudence.
The report revealed that while the committee finds no harm in some of the books, a number of others include material that incite civil disobedience.
The Liberation Party was founded in Egypt in 1974 by two Palestinians -- Salem Rahhal and Saleh Serrya -- only to be crushed by Egyptian authorities in the same year after being accused of an attempted coup d'etat known as "the incident of the Technical Military Academy", in which the academy was attacked by armed militants.
If found guilty, suspects could face up to 15 years in prison.
