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June 20, 2006
Egypt: Islamic Terror Group Now Claims It Is "Peaceful"
Today, AKI reports that an Islamist terror group, which organised the blowing up of former President Anwar Sadat in 1981, has now set up a website. The aim of this website is to state that the group, Jamaa Islamiya or Al-Jamaa Islamiya, has renounced violence.
The news was reported in the Saudi newspaper al-Watan today, The website will explain why the leaders of the group have now changed their minds about violence. In many cases, their conversion to "pacifism" led to their release from jail.
The website will also provide an account of what happened when they blew up Sadat, and will explain why they now believe the killing was wrong. Al-Watan reports that the website will seek to promote positive relations and cooperation with the Coptic Christians of Egypt, who comprise about 10% of the demographic. Recently, relations between Copts and Muslims went to a new low, with attacks upon their churches by Muslim extremists, and riots in the streets of Alexandria.
The group was founded in the 1970s, and came into existence when the largest Islamic group, the Muslim Brotherhood, publicly renounced the violence which it had advocated when its spiritual leader had been Sayyid Qutb.
Jamaa Islamiya originally had been an umbrella group for other militant Islamic groups based in universities, but then moved to encompass deprived neighbourhoods of Egyptian cities. One of the founding fathers of Jamaa Islamiyah was Ayman al-Zawahiri, the former eye surgeon who is now the second in command of Al Qaeda.
The high point of the group's violent activities came on Monday, November 17 1997, when six armed members of Jamaa Islamiyah slaughtered 58 tourists in Luxor. The victims were machine-gunned and hacked to death while they had been visiting the tomb of Queen Hatseheput in Luxor, northern Egypt. 36 of the victims were nationals of Switzerland.
The Luxor attack had a devastating effect on tourism, and led to a massive crackdown on the group. The Swiss authorities gave up trying to mount an investigation in March 2000 because of the lack of cooperation from the Egyptian authorities, who also refused to pay compensation to the victims' families.
Between 1992 and 1998, when the main body of Jamaa Islamiyah officially renounced violence, their insurgency had cost 1,300 lives.
In July 2000 the first members of Jamaa Islamiyah were released, along with members of the related groups, Egyptian Islamic Jihad and Taleh al-Fatah. About 500 militants were released, mainly those who had not been accused of taking part in violent operations. Those 500 had been released after officially "repenting".
The spiritual leader of the group was Omar Abdul Rahman (whose son had initially accused Israel of the Luxor attack). This man had planned the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, and had been imprisoned for life in 1994. From his jail cell in June 2000, the blind cleric originally agreed to sign a peace pledge, but then refused.
Some leaders of Jamaa Islamiyah were offered a peace deal in 2003 by General Omar Suleiman, the nation's security tzar, states Debka. 3,000 members in jails signed the anti-violence pledge, and were subsequently released.
Al Jamaa Islamiyah had been a main source of recruitment for Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which was a wing of Al Qaeda, managed by Zawahiri. Part of the contract signed by the Jamaa Islamiyah prisoners stipulated that the members would no longer recruit for this group.
Hardliners, such as Colonel Aboud al-Zomor, the member of Egyptian military intelligence who had organised the assassination of Sadat, along with his son Tarek al-Zomor, refused to sign the 2003 deal. In September 2003, Egypt arrested several members of Islamic Jihad, while announcing more releases of Jamaa Islamiyah prisoners who had signed the peace pledge.
Personally, I am skeptical of leopards that claim to change their spots. With no clear evidence of an ideological Damascene conversion, I remain skeptical.
In separate news, yesterday, the Egyptian government arrested 31 members of the Muslim Brotherhood, states the BBC. The arrests took place in the Mediterranean coastal city of Marsa Matruh. Those arrested had been distributing leaflets and books promoting the Muslim Brotherhood.
A spokesman from the often banned, but sometimes tolerated, group said that the people detained were not Brotherhood members but holiday-makers from Alexandria.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at June 20, 2006 9:38 PM
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