(AFP Photo)
North Sinai police referred two men with suspected ties to the kidnapping of seven soldiers earlier this month to the prosecution on Thursday, in order to investigate any possible links between them and the kidnappers.
Police tracked down the internet café from which the kidnappers from the Sinai hostage crisis uploaded the video of their demands and arrested the café owner, the Ministry of Interior announced Wednesday.
The owner told officials the name of a man who sat at the computer found to be the one from which the video was uploaded and police have arrested that man as well.
Security officials said they followed geolocation signals from the video following its uploading to YouTube which led to an internet café in Arish where they arrested the owner. The man denied any links to the video or the kidnappers and said he had many customers every day renting a computer at an hourly rate.
He gave police the names of all customers from that day, as well as the name of a man who had been using the computer that officials determined was the one from which the video had been uploaded. The second man in turn also denied any links to the video or the kidnapping.
Unidentified gunmen kidnapped seven off duty security personnel on 16 May; six of them belonging to different sections of the Ministry of Interior and one being a military volunteer non-commissioned officer with the Border Guards.
The kidnappers released a video of the soldiers three days later, depicting them blindfolded and bound. They had one of them read their demands, which were the release of Sinai political prisoners. Several families identified the soldiers in the videos as their children.
The soldiers were freed on 22 May following a successful operation by military intelligence.
