News


Title: Part 3 of Islamic Jihad Trial Testimony  

Document Number: FBIS-NES-1999-0309
Document Type: Daily Report
Document Title: FBIS Translated Text 
Document Region: Near East/South Asia 
Document Date: 08 Mar 1999
Division: Arab Africa 
Subdivision: Egypt 
Sourceline: MM0903150599 London Al-Sharq al-Awsat in Arabic 8 Mar 99 p 10 
AFS Number: MM0903150599 
Citysource: London Al-Sharq al-Awsat 
Language: Arabic 
N/A
Subslug: Part three of report by Khalid Sharaf-al-Din from Cairo: "Bin-Ladin 
Backed Down on Entering Egypt and Led a Fundamentalist Delegation on a 
Secret Visit to Albania. Islamic Group Members Planned to Rob Jewelry 
Shops in Amman, Sanaa, and Jeddah To Finance Their Operations" 


[FBIS Translated Text] The Military Court's investigation of the Returnees 
from Albania Organization was sensational and full of surprises. A number 
of defendants confirmed that the Islamic Group Organization [IG], which 
is banned in Egypt, proposed to Usamah Bin-Ladin a plan for hiding him 
inside Egyptian territory. They stressed that the plan required Bin-Ladin 
to undergo plastic surgery and change some of his physical features, 
enter Egypt with forged travel documents, and hide in a remote area in 
Upper Egypt. 
In the investigations, parts of which Al-Sharq al-Awsat has seen, the 
defendants said that Bin-Ladin was convinced by this plan and began to 
study it on the basis of the information that the IG gave him about some 
towns in Upper Egypt, like al-Minya, Asyut, Suhaj, Qina, and others. It 
also provided him with other information about the population, 
demography, and topography of these governorates and available security 
measures. The defendants added: Bin-Ladin's escape to Egypt would have 
been the deal of a lifetime for him and the IG because it was the only 
country where no one would have suspected him living in. His funds would 
have been a big source of financing that the IG could never dream of, 
specially after its financial resources diminished substantially as a 
result of the tight Egyptian security cordon. 
The defendants also said in the investigations: The plan was cancelled 
following contacts between Bin-Ladin and senior leaders from the Jihad 
Organization, foremost of them Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri who warned him of 
the Egyptian security services. Al-Zawahiri also stressed to him that 
escaping to and hiding in Egypt would be a big risk in view of the 
country's flat lands and the security services' strong hold on the 
fundamentalist organizations. 
They added that Bin-Ladin ruled out this plan totally but thought of it 
again after the US strike on his positions in Afghanistan. 

ROBBING JEWELRY SHOPS IN ARAB COUNTRIES [subhead] 

There was no end to the surprises that emerged from the confessions made 
by members of the Returnees from Albania Organization, or the Arab 
Balkans as they are called. They confirmed that some members planned to 
rob jewelry shops in some Arab countries in order to finance the 
Organization's activities, spend on its members' travel between various 
countries, forge official documents and passports, and provide the 
necessary funds for carrying out the Organization's plans inside Egypt. 
Defendant 'Isam 'Abd-al-Tawwab 'Abd-al-'Alim's confessions confirmed that some 
members planned to rob jewelry shops in the Jordanian capital Amman, the 
Yemeni capital Sanaa, and the Saudi city of Jeddah. A special fatwa 
[religious legal ruling] was issued for that purpose by some 
fundamentalist shaykhs. The defendant added: Defendants 'Isam Shu'ayb and 
Faysal Muhammad 'Ayyad were supposed to take part in this plan under the 
supervision of leader Usamah Siddiq who prepared the plan and its details 
during his stay in a number of Arab countries (Yemen and Saudi Arabia). 
But the group, which lived in Jordan for a long time, failed to carry out 
the robbery after failing to secure the necessary weapons for raiding the 
shops. They also realized the difficulty of completing the operation in a 
strange country where they had no knowledge of any safe routes to escape 
with their loot and did not know how to sell the jewelry for cash or how 
to smuggle it out of Jordan. 
Defendant 'Isam 'Abd-al-Tawwab added: The Organization's group that had lived 
in Jordan for a long time told leader Usamah Siddiq that it could not 
carry out the plan. Orders were then issued not to carry it out for the 
sake of protecting the members. 
The defendant had made detailed confessions about the Organization's 
activities to the Higher State Security Prosecution Office before the 
case was referred to the Military Court. He confessed that he fled from 
Egypt in 1992 after his group in Bani Suwayf killed a dissident member 
called Husam al-Batuji and he was accused of being involved in the 
killing. He added that he moved between several Arab countries with 
forged documents and that leaders of the banned Jihad Organization who 
lived in London provided him with the necessary funds for his travels 
before he settled in Pristina. He added that he met senior leader Ahmad 
al-Najjar in Albania and learned from him about the Organization's 
organizational structure and the nature of its objective to bring down 
Egypt's regime. He noted that the Organization operated as an integrated 
structure of clusters that was divided into a number of committees. The 
leading committee was the one charged with carrying out armed terrorist 
operations inside Egypt. It was followed by the security committee which 
was in charge of training members on the ways of dealing with the 
security organs, avoiding being followed, and standing fast during 
interrogations. There was the shari'ah committee which taught members the 
Organization's ideas and the social one which took care of the detained 
members' families. 
The defendant revealed that several organizational meetings were held 
abroad which were attended by the Organization leader Ayman al-Zawahiri 
and others residing in London who used forged travel documents. He 
confirmed that there were a number of splits and disputes between the 
members during the period that preceded its discovery by the Egyptian 
security services. He said that fugitive defendant Hasan 'Ujayzah 
announced that he had split from the group led by Ayman al-Zawahiri. He 
added: Some members accused 'Ujayzah of having more extremist ideas since 
he believed that there was no proscription on taking money while Jihad 
required a fatwa for specific cases, similar to the ones issued to rob 
jewelry shops in Jordan. 

'ISAM, HUSAM, AND MAJOR GENERAL KHAYRAT [subhead] 

The fundamentalist organizations' activities outside Egypt in addition 
to their local ones were revealed by the confessions of the defendants in 
this exceptionally complicated judicial and organizational issue. 
We stay with defendant 'Isam 'Abd-al-Tawwab 'Abd-al-'Alim. He is a 
controversial figure who was involved in several incidents. His 
activities span the whole history of the IG for more than 21 years. He 
always played the very important role of the mediator between a number of 
leaders, most noticeably between Usamah Siddiq and defendant Husam 
Nuwayr. The latter had already been indicted in the assassination of Maj. 
Gen. Ra'uf Khayrat, Assistant Director of the Egyptian State Security 
Intelligence Service. He also provided the funds and brought the weapons 
that were used in the nine bank explosions and helped monitor a number of 
Egyptian security officials. He carried out the decision to assassinate 
Khayrat when he prepared an automatic rifle and silencer. He then told 
Tal'at Yasin Hammam of the operation's success before the latter was 
killed in a confrontation with the security services. He was also in 
charge of distributing funds to the detainees' families. His career began 
when he was arrested in the Adam Mosque incident in 'Ayn Shams and 
imprisoned for 10 months. He said in his confessions that he was exempted 
from military service because his brother was among the detained IG 
members. He confessed that his brother convinced him to join the group. 
He added that the reason he confessed about Hasan Salih was because the 
latter was his cellmate during his imprisonment. All he knew about Tal'at 
Yasin Hammam was that he was the IG prince as reported in the press. 
But all the investigations and the confessions made by the other 
defendants confirmed that he was Hammam's right-hand man who called him 
the IG's dynamo. Preparations for every operation began and ended with 
him. He was the one who issued the statements to news agencies announcing 
the IG's responsibility for these operations. He said that the 
Organization's aim was to hit the state's economic foundations by 
undertaking hostile actions that targeted banks in particular because 
they did not follow Islamic shari'ah. He added that the Ibn-Taymiyah's 
fatwa that the Tatars must be fought applied to the banks. 
He asked the Organization's members to use aliases and provided them 
with forged documents for traveling from Egypt to Afghanistan or the 
Balkans. Yet he used all the "No's" in the Arabic language to deny what 
the investigations said about him. He said that his detained colleagues' 
confessions against him were untrue and that the material seized did not 
belong him and that it was the first time that he saw it. 
The case papers also show that he denied all the evidence against him 
presented by the Egyptian security organs. "No" was the only word he kept 
repeating during the investigations with him that were held before Hisham 
Saraya, the Higher States Security's Prosecutor General.