Death of Mastermind Who Plotted Bombing of Dahab Will Not Stop Terror

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CAIRO, Egypt – Terror in Egypt and the region is sure to persist despite yesterday’s killing of the lead suspect behind last month’s triple bombing in Sinai, according to a former Egyptian Interior Ministry general and leading Sinai activist.

Egyptian counterterrorism officers yesterday raided a farm in the Sinai town of El Arish where Nasr Khamis el-Milahi was hiding. After trying to make an escape, Mr. Milahi was gunned down, according to the authorities.

Egypt’s Interior Ministry has pinned the attacks last month in the Red Sea resort of Dahab on Mr. Milahi, who they say is a leader of Tawhid wal Jihad (or monotheism and holy struggle), the group behind the recent attacks.

According to the Interior Ministry, Mr. Milahi’s Islamist organization has no connection to Al Qaeda but has been behind the terror attacks in Sinai resorts of Taba, Sharm el-Sheikh, and Dahab since 2004. The death toll of these acts has hit 117, according to Reuters.

But other observers here say that Mr. Milahi may be a scapegoat. “I don’t think this story is right, the whole incident is beyond the capabilities of the Sinai people,” an activist who has worked on behalf of Bedouins in the Sinai, Ashraf Ayoub said in an interview. “The Egyptian regime insists on finding a scapegoat each time, forgetting about the fact that there could be a role of the Mossad or Al Qaeda.”

Mr. Milahi added that in 2005 said a Palestinian Arab named Khalled Missaed was the mastermind behind the Taba bombings of 2004 after he was killed in a similar type of shoot out. Mr. Ayoub said that the information leading to the raid on Mr. Milahi’s farm came from the confessions of a Bedouin he called “Yunis,” who was under duress and torture, and that he doubted the information. “This has not ended,” he said. “They have not dealt with the real problem.”

A retired interior ministry general and former deputy of the state’s powerful security investigations division, Fouad Allam, yesterday did not dispute that Mr. Milahi was in fact the head of the organization his old colleagues claimed. But he also added a warning: “I am sure that this will happen not only in Sinai, but in the world. I have been warning against the new terrorist wave since 9/11. I am here confirming that not a single country in the world is going to be safe from this wave,” he said.

Mr. Allam agreed however with the Egyptian authorities on a key point, that Tawhid Wal Jihad was not organizationally linked to Al Qaeda. Privately, Israeli security, which retains contacts from the Sinai from when it ruled over the peninsula between 1967 and 1978, differ with this assessment. Yesterday Israel’s Foreign Ministry issued a warning to all of its citizens to leave Sinai. The warning said, “The danger is imminent and the Israeli tourists should return to Israel without any delay.” It also warned that there was now a “tangible” threat that Israeli tourists would be kidnapped. Before last month’s attacks in Dahab, Israeli intelligence had predicted increased Al Qaeda activity in Sinai as well.

“Al Qaeda as an organization as we knew it five or six years ago does not exist anymore,” Mr. Allam said. “On the other hand, the literature and ideas of Al Qaeda is all over, on the Internet, in books. A lot of these groups all around the world are centered around the alleged heroism of bin Laden, as the one man challenging the greatest force in the world.” Mr. Allam said that the Sinai terrorists were inspired ideologically by Al Qaeda.

Following the July 2005 Sharm el Seikh bombing, an organization called Tawhid wal Jihad, issued a statement claiming that they were acting on orders from Ayman al Zawahiri. Mr. Zawahiri is not only the deputy commander of Al Qaeda, but was a member of a violent splinter group of followers of the Egyptian imam, Sayed Qutb, that ended up plotting the 1981 assassination of Anwar Sadat. Mr. Zawahiri left Egypt permanently in the early 1980s.

Another clue to the link between Tawhid wal Jihad and Al Qaeda is its name. It’s quite popular among Islamist terrorists. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi called his outfit Tawhid wal Jihad in Iraq before changing it to Al Qaeda in Iraq.


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