CAIRO: A former official of Egypt s Jamaa Islamiya said on Sunday that even if some members of the Islamist group had joined Al-Qaeda it was unlikely that most would. Al-Qaeda s deputy head Ayman Al-Zawahri had said in a video aired on Al-Jazeera television on Saturday that some Jamaa leaders had joined the militant network led by Osama bin Laden.
If [some] brothers … have joined, then this is their personal view and I don t think that most Jamaa Islamiya members share that same opinion, Sheikh Abdel Akher Hammad, a former Jamaa leader, told Al-Jazeera by telephone from Bonn, Germany. There has been no immediate reaction to the Al-Qaeda video from Jamaa Islamiya, which waged a campaign against the Egyptian government in the 1990s to set up a purist Islamic state before declaring a truce with Cairo. In the video, Egyptian-born Al-Zawahri named Mohamed Al-Islambouli as one of those who joined al Qaeda. He was apparently referring to Mohamed Shawqi Islambouli, a Jamaa leader and a brother of Khaled Islambouli, who assassinated President Anwar Sadat in 1981. A man introduced by Al-Zawahri as another Jamaa leader, Mohamed Hakaima, appeared in a portion of the video and confirmed the unity move, but said some group members had deviated from it. This [statement] should be treated cautiously. Jamaa Islamiya in Egypt has its leaders and officials who can determine its path and direction, said Hammad, who spent three years in jail in the 1980s for involvement in Sadat s assassination. Egypt also detained thousands of Jamaa members or sympathizers in the 1990s, but hundreds have since been freed after renouncing the use of violence to overthrow the government. Reuters
