CAIRO: A leader of an increasingly prominent hardline sect in Egypt praised Osama bin Laden on Tuesday and said the jihadist leader was a martyr who died with his "head held high."
Yassir Al-Burhami, a Salafi cleric in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, said bin Laden was a "martyr" who "was killed with his head held high, and God did not hand him over to his enemies," the official MENA news agency reported.
He added that that the disposal of bin Laden’s body at sea after US commandos killed him in a Pakistan hideout showed the United States "knows no sanctity towards those alive or dead."
Salafis believe Muslims should return to the practices of their forbears. The sect’s followers are mostly peaceful but its ideology has also inspired militants such as the Saudi-born bin Laden.
They have begun taking a more active role in Egyptian politics after a popular revolt ousted president Hosni Mubarak in February.
Salafist popularity is difficult to gauge but its increasing assertiveness worries secular Egyptians and the country’s large Coptic Christian minority.
