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.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS