CAIRO, 2 May 2005 — Egyptian authorities detained some 226 people yesterday for questioning from the home villages of the three extremists responsible for the twin attacks in Cairo, police officials said.
Police said that the detainees, mainly from the villages of Al-Ammar, Ezbet Al-Gabalawi and the district of Shubra, were arrested for investigation by the state security to determine whether there were more members of the group behind the deadly blast that rocked a central Cairo bazaar on April 7 which killed three tourists and a bomber.
“We are also looking for the driver of the car that drove the two veiled women to the scene of the shooting yesterday,” said a security official who asked to remain anonymous. “We are afraid that there might be some more members on the run, especially after we found in one woman’s bag a piece of paper saying ‘we will continue to sacrifice our lives to let others live’,” the official added.
Egyptian authorities had previously identified the bomber as 45-year-old Ihab Yousri Yassin, a fugitive member of the group which planned the April 7 bombing. They also said that the two women were Iman Ibrahim Khamees, Yousri’s wife and Nagat Yosuri Yassin, his sister. Yousri’s sister shot and wounded Khamees before shooting herself dead when police chased them after they opened fire on a tourist bus in southern Cairo near Salah Eddin Citadel, a popular tourist destination. All three were related to Ashraf Said, a suspect in the Khan Al-Khalili bazaar blast who died in police custody a few days ago. Authorities said the attacks were “apparently acts of revenge for Said who they think was tortured to death during the investigation.”
Essam Al-Erian, a leading member of Muslim Brotherhood, said the government’s theory seems to be quite plausible as it was the first time in Egypt that women have carried out terrorist attacks. “They might have been totally convinced that they were subjected to injustice and that their relative was a victim so they sought vengeance,” he explained.
The crude, homemade bomb injured three Egyptians and four foreigners. According to the Ministry of Health, three foreigners left hospital yesterday while the rest are in a stable condition.
Dia Rashwan, an expert on terrorism at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, agrees. “These attacks are very amateurish and all the Islamist movements in Egypt have quit violence after the government cracked down on them and after realizing that they were turning the public against them,” Rashwan said. “This is of course dangerous because we cannot find any traces of a real group or any kind of organization which makes it hard for the government to fight them,” he told Arab News.
Islamist lawyer Montasser Al-Zayat has long posited the rise of “freelance jihadists,” unaffiliated agents that stage attacks out of sympathy with Al-Qaeda, the Iraqis or the Palestinians.
Despite the fact that attacks were clearly against foreigners and Egypt’s tourism industry, officials and experts alike said the industry will continue to boom. Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmad Nazif said tourism is safe as the attacks do not signal the return of violent militancy.
“I do not think any Egyptian agrees with such incidents which destabilize security and attempt to threaten the Egyptian society and one of the sources of its livelihood, which is tourism,” he told reporters.
“I do not think this will be a pattern in Egypt. I am positive that our society and the security services are able to maintain security and safety.”
Some of the embassies have already posted statements on their websites advising anyone traveling to Egypt to be “aware of the risks.”
Meanwhile, Ali Gomaa, the grand mufti of Egypt, condemned the attacks calling them “treacherous crimes that are totally against Islam and the teachings of Prophet Muhammad.”
“People who think about carrying out similar attacks must realize that they are not doing something heroic but are committing a great, unforgivable sin since Islam is totally against terrorizing people,” said Gomaa.
“Now I repeat it again for everyone…those who blow themselves up and kill innocents are not martyrs but infidels,” he told Arab News.
