CAIRO, 22 May 2005 — Egyptian suspect held in connection with a bombing in Cairo last month has died in police custody, Egypt’s general prosecutor Maher Abdel Wahed said. Asharf Saied Youssef, identified by the Egyptian Interior Ministry as one of the people who recruited the bomber who killed two French men, an American and himself in Al-Azhar bazaar in Cairo on April 7, died in custody on Thursday in hospital.
“Youssef was in a very abnormal condition and all of a sudden he hit his head in the wall and died immediately after reaching hospital,” said Abdel Wahed. “The body has been transferred to the forensic department to get more information about the cause of his death or the hysterical condition he went through before hitting his dead,” he told Arab News in a phone interview.
The police sources, who asked to remain anonymous, said police refused to give the man’s body to his family in his village north of Cairo for burial until the forensic report is released.
On April 29, Youssef’s 40-year-old cousin Muhammad Suleiman Youssef, 40, died also in police custody and the circumstances of his death were unclear.
Meanwhile, Egypt’s administrative judicial court is to rule tomorrow on a request by opposition parties for an injunction against a referendum on a key constitutional reform, a lawyer said yesterday.
Egyptians will go to the polls on Wednesday to vote on amendments to article 76 of the constitution, which is expected to pave the way for country’s first competitive presidential polls.
The leftist Tagammu, Nasserist and liberal Al-Ghad parties want the process halted on the grounds that procedures organizing the referendum are flawed, Tagammu lawyer Nur Farhat told AFP.
