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August 15, 2006

Egypt: Muslim Group Denies Al Qaeda Links

We reported on August 5 that the second in command of Al Qaeda, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, had appeared in a video, broadcast on Al Jazeera TV. In this video, made by Al Qaeda, he announced that an Egyptian Muslim group had joined forces with Al Qaeda.

This group is Jamaa Islamiya, also called Gamaa Islamiya. Al-Jama'ah Ismaliyah, al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya. It had been founded in the 1970s, and one of those who created it was former Egyptian eye surgeon, Ayman Al-Zawahri. The group had gone on to blow up Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian President, in 1981, because he had made peace with Israel. The group had links with Egyptian Islamic Jihad and Taleh al-Fatah.

The group, formed as a reponse to a decision by the Muslim Brotherhood to renounce violence, had carried out several attacks upon perceived "enemies", culminating in the massacre of 58 tourists on November 17, 1997. Mostly Swiss in origin, the tourists had been machine gunned or hacked to death in Luzor, while visiting the tomb of Queen Hatsheput. By this time, the group had killed 1,300 people.

But then there was a sea-change in the group. In 1997/8, it announced that it too would give up violence, in response to moves by the Egyptian government. Some members, such as Omar Abdul Rahman, the cleric involved in the first World Trade Center bombing in February 1993, announced from his US jail in 2000 that he would sign the peace accord, then decided to stick to the principles of supporting armed jihad.

In June the official group announced that it had set up a website, according to Saudi newspaper al-Watan.The website aimed to show to the world that Jamaa Islamiya had renounced violence for good.

Now, a report in yesterday's Asharq ALaswat reports that the core members of the group have reacted angrily to Zawahiri's interventions, and have said that Al Qaeda had been deliberately trying to taint their reputation.

Senior leaders also said that, since the UK plot to bomb airlines was revealed on August 10, it had become clear that Al Qaeda (implicated in that plot) had been trying to undermine the trust it had built up with the current government of President Mubarak.

However, despite condemning Al Qaeda, the group still supports terrorism elsewhere. On Sunday (August 13), its website announced on its website that the Iranian regime was deliberately and openly playing a role in "facilitating the entry of US forces into Iraq". One assumes that this statement means that Iran is behind the Shia elements who are active in promoting a state of virtual civil war in Iraq.

It praised the terrorist group Hezbollah, saying it had "achieved a miracle" in southern Lebanon.

One wonders how peaceful this group's core membership really is.

In April this year, 900 members of the group were released from prison, including Najeh Ibrahim, its main founder.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at August 15, 2006 8:18 PM

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