CAIRO: Some 25 Egyptians arrested in November are being questioned by prosecutors for allegedly planning terrorist attacks, a security official and a lawyer said Sunday.
The security official said the suspects were arrested on charges of stockpiling weapons and explosives to be used in “attacks against targets inside Egypt. The men were arrested in Mansoura, northeast of Cairo, two months ago and are believed to be members of a new Islamic militant group.
The official and lawyer both spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigations.
“They are accused of forming a new Islamic militant group based on ideas of Sayyid Qutb, said the lawyer referring to an Egyptian ideologue executed in 1966 whose ideas provide much of the intellectual basis for today’s militant groups.
The Egyptian independent daily Al-Masry Al-Youm reported Sunday that the group was planning to attack US ships in the Suez Canal and the tomb of revered Jewish holy man, Abu Hatzira in the Nile Delta.
Quoting security officials, the paper also said the group was planning to ship weapons and explosives to Hamas for use in their rockets.
The report added that some of the suspects have received training in the troubled Sudanese region of Darfur.
Egypt security forces have recently reported the arrest of several new militant groups looking to carry out attacks against Egyptian and foreign targets, mainly US and Israeli interests.
Commenting on news of the recent arrests, Diaa Rashwan, an expert on Islamist movements at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, was weary of the reference to Sayyid Qutb.
“I don’t know what they mean by mentioning [that the detainees] follow the ideas of Sayyid Qutb, but they might mean that they are extremists as he had extremists ideas.
He did warn, however, against the media’s tendency to treat what he referred to as “security leaks, emphasizing that such media reports must not be considered facts until there is a court case and those involves face legal charges.
He added that since the 1997 terrorist attack in Luxor, the state has only initiated two cases against extremists for the Khan El-Khalili bombing in 2005 and the recent 2008 Al-Hussein bombing.
Islamist lawyer Montasser El-Zayat, who represents some of the suspects, categorically denies that the detainees were planning any terrorist attacks.
These people did nothing but may confess under duress to crimes they did not commit, he told Daily News Egypt.
He accused state security of using violence to extract confessions and of holding the suspects illegally without allowing them access to either their families or even their lawyer.
They are political activists who hold religious views against the government and this is why they have been arrest, he said. -AP with additional reporting by Omnia Al Desoukie for Daily News Egypt
