CAIRO: Relatives of Ahmed Eid, the man believed to have shot a police officer in Suez and was later killed, reportedly escaped from Abu Za abal prison last week, according to sources in North Sinai.
Sources in the area told Daily News Egypt that the two escaped detainees were relatives of Eid, who had been wanted on drug charges prior to the shooting of head of criminal investigations in Suez city Ibrahim Abdel-Maboud last September, in which two other officers were injured.
Security authorities later announced that Eid was gunned down in a shootout in Sinai as he attempted to evade capture.
Al-Dostour newspaper had reported that families of Bedouin detainees in four prisons had complained that they were no longer allowed prison visits in the wake of the escape of the two detainees.
The newspaper reported that the interior ministry had issued a decision to prevent visitation rights for all Bedouin detainees incarcerated in the four prisons. Additionally, security forces are still on the trail of other Bedouins wanted on various charges.
Tagammu party member in North Sinai Khalil Jabr Sawarkeh told Daily News Egypt that visiting detainees was difficult even before the alleged escape last week.
Under the emergency law it was difficult to see the detainees for at least 40 days, now it may take three months from the point of incarceration to see them, he said, To be able to visit them, families must get a permit from the prosecutor s office in Cairo.
Most of the 800 Bedouin detainees being held in Abu Za abal, Borg El-Arab, Wadi Al-Natroun and Al-Fayoum prisons are being held on suspicion of involvement in smuggling activities on the Rafah-Gaza border.
The fallout from Eid s death has not ended with tensions still present between tribes over suspicions of informing on his whereabouts prior to his shooting.
Last October, clashes erupted between two Bedouin tribes, the Tarabin and the Ayayada over suspicions that the latter tribe was complicit in informing the police on the whereabouts of Eid, who was a member of the Tarabin.
Additionally, some members of the Tarabin seem to believe that Eid was not gunned down by police forces in the shootout, but rather was killed by an informant from the Ayayda tribe in exchange for dropping charges leveled in absentia against the informant.
