Weeks before the Egyptian Interior Minister made a rare visit to Teheran, Iran handed Egypt a senior Islamist member of the outlawed Gamaa Islamiya, the London-based al-Hayat newspaper reported Sunday. Al-Hayat, quoting a statement by the London-based al-Maqrizi Centre for Historical Studies, said Mustafa Hamza was currently in an Egyptian prison. Hamza was one of the gunman allegedly involved in a 1995 assassination attempt on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak during a summit in Ethiopia. He was also wanted for the 1981 assassination of former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and served three years in prison until he escaped to Afghanistan.
Al-Hayat said Hamza was delivered to Cairo under a deal that includes establishing Iranian cultural centres in Egypt, and Egyptians giving Iran security information about Iranian opposition members living in Egypt. Another part of the deal, al-Hayat reported, includes "improving the image of Iran in the US administration through Egyptian mediation". Hamza faces three death sentences in Egypt. His name is included in a 1996 Egyptian list of 14 "most dangerous wanted Islamists living abroad". Egyptian Interior Minister Habib al-Adli made a rare visit to Teheran last week to take part in a meeting of Iraq's neighbouring countries' interior ministers.
Last week, the same London-based centre announced that a senior leader of al-Gamaa al-Islamiya, Rifai Taha, detained in a Cairo prison since 2001, was continuing to refuse to renounce violence as a condition for a reduced sentence. Taha was an aide of Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden and was seen in a 2000 interview alongside him and Egyptian Islamic Jihad leader Ayman Zawahiri during which they renewed a call for jihad (holy war) against the United States.
| He's one of the signatories to Binny's declaration of war on us. Knowing he's safe in an Egyptian calaboose makes me feel better, though just in case they do decide to spring him I'd feel even better if he had an "unfortunate accident." |
I'd feel better if we knew he was being held in double super-secret solitary...with not as much as a rat to screech at preach at. |
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