CAIRO: Former Minister of Interior Mohamed Al-Nabawi Ismail died early Monday at Dar El-Fouad Hospital.
A graduate of the Police Academy in 1946, he was the Minister of Interior from 1977-1982 succeeding Mamdouh Salem and was in office when former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat was assassinated in 1981.
He had also studied law upon his graduation and joined the State Security branch of the Interior Ministry right after the military revolution of 1952.
Prior to Sadat’s assassination, Ismail had carried out a series of arrests at the president’s behest in September 1981 which included Pope Shenouda III, Omar Telmissany of the Muslim Brotherhood and former Al-Ahram editor-in-cheif Mohamed Hassanein Heikal.
President Hosni Mubarak dismissed Ismail in 1982 in what was seen at a popular move at the time because of the campaign of arrests Ismail had conducted the previous September.
Ismail was the target of numerous assassination attempts by Islamic fundamentalists in retaliation to his crackdown on Islamists, the last of which was in 1987. -Daily News Egypt
