Twenty-two men, dressed in white and crowded into a cage in a Cairo court, on Sunday denied charges of plotting attacks in Egypt for Lebanon’s Hezbollah group, with some alleging torture by police.
As the trial began, the alleged members of the cell pleaded not guilty to charges of “conspiracy to murder, spying for a foreign organization with intent of conducting terrorist attacks and weapons possession.”
Some of the defendants said they had been tortured in police custody, with one man shouting to the judge: “If you don’t believe us, just look at our bodies.”
PHOTO: REUTERS
Four more accused are on the run and are being tried in abstentia, including alleged Lebanese mastermind Mohammed Qublan.
The accused include two Lebanese, five Palestinians and 19 Egyptians.
During the hearing one man shouted, “We are at your command Nasrallah,” in an apparent reference to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who admitted in April that one of the defendants, Lebanese Mohammed Yusuf Ahmed Mansur known as Sami Shihab, was a Hezbollah agent.
Nasrallah said Mansur was tasked with smuggling weapons to militants in the Gaza Strip.
Family members were barred from attending the hearing. Dozens of relatives stood outside the courtroom in the hope of getting a glimpse of the defendants they had not seen in months.
“We don’t know anything about him. We have not seen him or heard from him in over nine months,” said the mother of Ihab Abdel Hadi, 30, who was arrested at his home in the north Sinai town of El-Arish in December.
Ihab’s wife Dina, 20, wearing a long black gown and niqab slitted to reveal her wet eyes, prayed nearby as she carried her one-year-old son.
“He is innocent, totally innocent. He is not into politics. He is a simple builder who only cares about his family,” she said.
As the blue vans carrying the defendants rolled in amid a blare of sirens, female relatives began to wail.
“May God punish the punishers,” screamed one woman at the top of her voice.
“Show some mercy during Ramadan,” another shouted.
Munira al-Hanafi, the wife of defendant Mossad Abdel Rahman al-Sherif, said her husband had been living in Saudi Arabia for the past two years and only came back to Egypt in April, when he was arrested at the airport.
“If he were guilty, would he have come home in the middle of the storm?” she asked, standing next to Mossad’s two sisters who were carrying plastic bags filled with food and drink they hoped to pass on to their brother.
Authorities began arresting members of what has become known as the “Hezbollah cell” last year, accusing them of plotting attacks against Israeli tourists and on ships in the Suez Canal.
The arrests led to a war of words between Sunni Egypt and Hezbollah’s Shiite Iranian backers, with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit accusing Iran of using Hezbollah to gain a foothold in Egypt.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
A colossal explosion in the sky, unleashing energy hundreds of times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. A blinding flash nearly as bright as the sun. Shockwaves powerful enough to flatten everything for miles. It might sound apocalyptic, but a newly detected asteroid nearly the size of a football field now has a greater than 1 percent chance of colliding with Earth in about eight years. Such an impact has the potential for city-level devastation, depending on where it strikes. Scientists are not panicking yet, but they are watching closely. “At this point, it’s: ‘Let’s pay a lot of attention, let’s
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
RSS