EL-ARISH, Egypt, 10 April 2005 — Armed with food and blankets to see them through the night, some 150 men and women gathered in the town of El-Arish on Friday to begin an open-ended strike in protest against the mass detention of their relatives, held in connection with last year’s terror attacks in the Sinai.
The protesters have demonstrated every Friday for weeks now, calling on the government to release the detainees who are believed to number 2,400. The government has refused to say how many people are in custody, or whether they’ve been charged.
The demonstrators gathered at the headquarters of a leftist opposition party in the northern Sinai town of El-Arish, and said they won’t leave until authorities release the prisoners arrested in the wake of Oct. 7 hotel bombings in Taba and Ras Shitan that killed 34 people. They also said that they will start a hunger strike by today.
The demonstrators complain that their relatives continue to be detained despite an announcement last week from the country’s prosecutor general that two men will be tried in connection with the attacks; they argue the rest should be set free.
Meanwhile, Egypt’s public prosecutor said yesterday the bomber who killed two tourists in a Cairo bazaar this week was acting alone and carrying a crude bomb of TNT and nails hidden in a black bag.
“The investigations have proved that this was the act of an individual, not a group,” public prosecutor Maher Abdel Wahid told reporters. He did not explain how the detectives had reached this conclusion.
In an Internet posting on Friday, a previously unknown Islamist group said it was behind the bombing on Thursday. The blast, which killed a French woman, an American man and the suspected bomber was the first fatal attack on tourists in the Nile valley since 1997, when militants killed 58 tourists and four Egyptians at a temple near Luxor. Eleven Egyptians and eight foreigners were wounded in the evening bombing in the crowded Cairo bazaar where shops sell perfume, jewelry, carpets and souvenirs to tourists.
Abdel Wahid said forensic scientists went back to the scene of the attack yesterday to look for parts of the bomber’s hands, which were missing from the unidentified body, so that they can take fingerprints.
He said detectives had already taken DNA samples. A French man who was in critical condition in hospital is now out of danger, Tourism Minister Ahmed El-Maghrabi said.
A group calling itself the Islamic Pride Brigades in the Land of the Nile said one of its militants carried out the attack to protest against the “tyranny” of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s government and US policies in the region. But there was no way to authenticate the claim or judge whether such a group exists.
Government spokesman Magdy Rady said the interior minister briefed the Cabinet on the initial investigations, suggesting that a man carrying an explosive device was behind the blast.
“It is almost a 100 percent that it is an individual act,” said Rady. “It is either a suicide bombing or it exploded on him prematurely.” Rady said if the suicide bombing theory proves correct, it would be the first time such an attack has been carried out in Egypt.
Egypt’s pro-government daily Al-Ahram reported that the initial investigations indicated the blast was caused by a suicide attacker. Opposition newspaper Al-Wafd published a photograph of the reconstructed remains of a body believed to be that of the attacker. Investigators are running DNA tests on the remains.
Al-Arabiya satellite TV station aired footage taken by mobile telephone of the scene in the crowded Al-Moski bazaar following the blast, showing bodies of several people struck by the explosion lying on the ground.
Investigators, speaking on condition of anonymity, said jailed militants from groups responsible for the violent campaign against the government during the 1990s denied any link to the attack.
