(AFP)-- Egyptian security officials have incarcerated a leading member of an Islamist gang suspected of being behind attacks on a pipeline supplying gas to Israel and Jordan.Mohammed al-Teehi of the radical Islamist group Al-Takfeer wal Hijra
| According to Wikipedia, Al Takfir wal Hijra ("Excommunication and Exile") is the mocking nickname given to the radical 1960s offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, Jama'at al-Muslimin ("Society of Muslims"), after they were crushed by the Egyptian government for kidnapping and killing a former official in a failed attempt to get a number of arrested members released. It does not seem to be clear whether this group consists of loosely affiliated cells which have committed acts of terror as far afield as Morocco and Holland, or whether they are merely a troublesome armed group wandering the Sinai desert. What is clear is that they lost the sympathy of the Egyptian people because, cult-like, they require members to cut off all contact with their families, which apparently does not fly in Egyptian society. |
On Thursday, two kabooms hit the pipeline. The pipeline, which carries gas through the Sinai and on to Jordan and Israel, had already been attacked six times since former president Hosni Mubarak
...The former President-for-Life of Egypt, dumped by popular demand in early 2011...
was toppled in February.
Egyptian authorities have on several occasions announced measures to step up protection of the pipeline and try to arrest those behind the attacks. Army experts have also located and defused a number of other devices targeting the pipeline.