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Bombs: British police in Cairo
17/07/2005 16:02 - (SA)
Cairo - Scotland Yard investigators were in Cairo on Sunday attempting to determine whether or not an Egyptian biochemist detained earlier this week was the bomb-maker behind the deadly July 7 London attacks.
"Anti-terrorist experts from Britain are at work to follow the investigation, but not take part in the interrogations," Egyptian security sources said, without elaborating on Scotland Yard's activities.
Magdy Nashar, a 33-year-old biochemist who lives in England, returned to Egypt four days before the quadruple bombings that left 55 people dead and wounded hundreds.
British authorities said they found signs in Nashar's home in Leeds that quantities of a compound called TATP, or triacetone triperoxide, had been converted into a powerful explosive.
Three of the suicide bombers, all of them of Pakistani origin, also lived in the Leeds area.
But the suspect's family and friends, as well as the Egyptian authorities, have insisted Nashar had no links with terrorist groups and could not have been the mastermind of the devastating bombings. No links with al-Qaeda
Interior minister Habib al-Adly stressed that Nashar had "no links with the al-Qaeda network".
The Egyptian authorities argue that the foreign media is drawing a hasty parallel between Nashar and Mohammed Atta, who masterminded the September 11 attacks and had also studied abroad.
Egypt has signalled it would resist pressure to extradite Nashar, whom they arrested late on Thursday.
But a prominent Egyptian Islamist lawyer who claims to head his defence team voiced his concern on Sunday that the young biochemist might be handed over to the British authorities anyway.
"I volunteered to be his lawyer because he is an Egyptian citizen and I am afraid that he will be handed over to the British and I want to make sure his rights are upheld," Mamduh Ismail told AFP.
Ismail, who rose to fame during Islamist trials in the mid-90s, said he was seeking to recruit a team of lawyers to organise Nashar's defence.
"I am sure he has no connection with the bombings in London," he said. Pious
Friends and relatives of the suspect were adamant he could not have been involved in the attacks and described him as pious, but open-minded and caring.
"Magdy couldn't have done such a thing, he was not the type to throw his life away. "In fact, he was on a break in Cairo to get married to a girl he had loved since his high school days," said childhood friend Hisham Abdelhamid.
A Christian neighbour in Cairo's working-class Abu Breik area in the southern Maadi district where Nashar grew up described him as "a lovely human being whom we consider family".
"If he was an extremist, he wouldn't socialise with us Christians. "In fact, I can't say a single bad thing about him," added Marzuq Riad, a man in his 70s.
- AFP
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