ISMAILIYA: A Palestinian militant recruited Egyptians to carry out the 2004 bombing of the Taba Hilton hotel and was part of a wider campaign against Israelis and U.S. troops in Iraq, an Egyptian police officer has told a court.
The Palestinian, Yasser Ahmed Mohsin, and 12 other suspects have been charged with bombing the Taba Hilton and Ras Shitan resort in October 2004 in an attack that killed 34 people, including 11 Israeli tourists. Mohsin repeatedly interrupted the testimony of police Capt. Ahmed Rushdi on Sunday, denying what the interrogation supervisor wastelling the court.
Another defendant, Mustafa Hussein Mohammed, shouted from the caged dock that he had been tortured and exposed his back to show multiple bruises.
The judge, Ahmed Al-Khashab, ordered that doctors examine all the accused for evidence of torture.
Rushdi s evidence reinforced the government s position that the Taba attack was part of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the alleged mastermind, Ayad Said Saleh, one of the suicide bombers, was a Palestinian resident of Sinai and about a third of the fatalities were Israelis.
Last week, the government said that Palestinians in the Gaza Strip had funded and trained the group responsible for the Taba attack as well as the bombings in Sharm El Sheikh last July and in Dahab last month. The three attacks killed about 120 people.
The police officer testified that the Palestinian defendant, a resident of Cairo, had confessed that he was aware of the Taba and Ras Shitan attacks, but he did not explain Mohsin s role.
He succeeded in persuading other members of the group to join his crusade in launching attacks inside Palestine and in Iraq targeting the occupation forces, Rushdi said, addin that the Palestinian militant, also known as emperor of the mountain, managed to recruit two other defendants, Ahmed Salam and Eid Amer.
The captain said the three defendants used to meet in the Halal mountains of northern Sinai, a haven for militants and smugglers.
The trial at the state security court in Ismailiya, 120 km east of Cairo, began in July last year with 15 accused, of which two were at large.
Police cornered the one fugitive defendant early this month, but he was killed in the shootout. The other fugitive defendant was captured with him, but is still being interrogated.
A statement signed by a group calling itself Egyptian Tawhid wal Jihad (Unififcation and Holy War) claimed responsibility for the Sharm bombing, saying it acted on orders from Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. But it was one of several conflicting claims by different groups.
The government has said the militants who carried out the three attacks belonged to the same group, which consisted of local people without international connections. ButTawhid wal Jihad has the ideology of Al Qaeda, seeking to impose a strict Islamic state across the Arab world, and Al-Qaeda s branch in Iraq used to employ the same name.
The government is known to be anxious to limit the attacks fallout on its tourism industry, the country s No. 1 source of foreign exchange. AP
