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Saturday July 16, 2005
Alleged London bombmaker arrested in Cairo
Magdy Al Nashar, a chemist of humble origins who had made it in his studies, protests his innocence
By Issandr El Amrani, Mandi Fahmi and Ursula Lindsey

The man who may have built the bombs used in last week's terrorist attacks in London has been arrested by State Security.

The Ministry of Interior confirmed on 15 July that they are holding Magdy Mahmoud Mustafa Al Nashar, 33, on suspicion of involvement in the terrorist attack. Although officials at the ministry said he was arrested the same morning in a dawn raid on his parents' house, neighbors of the family said he had been publicly arrested the previous day after afternoon prayers.

"The last time I saw him was Thursday [14 July] inside the mosque. Seventy-five officers came to arrest him," Said, a local shopkeeper, told Cairo.

Bassatine, the poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Maadi where he was arrested, was full of police cars and investigators on that day, neighbors said.

No formal charges have yet been brought against Al Nashar by either the British or Egyptian government. A security source at the Ministry of Interior told Cairo that he was being interrogated by Egyptian authorities, but that no foreign investigators had spoken to him yet.

Detectives from Scotland are due to interrogate him in the next few days, however, according to British press reports.

The official said that Al Nashar denied any involvement in the London bombings, adding that he told them that he was in Egypt for a six week visit and had intended to return to Leeds, where he had just finished a doctorate in chemistry. The inclusion of these statements by Al Nashar on the interior ministry statement suggests that Egyptian authorities—who do not as a rule emphasize the principle of innocent until proven guilty—do not believe that Al Nashar was involved in the bombing.

In Al Gomhouriya of 16 July, Minister of Interior Habib Al Adly was quoted saying “the Egyptian chemist Magdy Al Nashar has nothing to do with Al Qaeda.”

A security source told Cairo that Al Nashar may be being held at the State Security compound in Nasr City, a location with which many political prisoners, notably Islamists, are familiar. Human rights groups have condemned the interrogation methods and use of torture by State Security in holding cells at such facilities.

The security source said that if strong evidence that he was involved in the London bombings emerged he would "of course be extradited to Britain." But the officer also took the opportunity to criticize Britain's long-standing reluctance to extradite Islamists residing there to Cairo.

"It is well known that Egypt has asked many countries, including the UK, to extradite many fugitives that the UK gave asylum to, like Yasser al-Sirri against whom there is a death sentence in Egypt, and these countries used to refuse," he said, adding that President Hosni Mubarak has repeatedly called for an international anti-terrorism conference.

Neighbors in Bassatine described Al Nashar, who left Egypt more than five years ago to study in the US and then in England, as "a quiet and studious boy." They told the story of a young man whose brilliance in his field of study, chemistry, won him scholarships and an education his family could not have afforded by itself.

Al Nashar's father Mahmoud is a blacksmith and he was raised in a humble first-floor apartment on a small, unpaved street strewn with garbage. Although religious, Al Nashar's neighbors said that he was not an extremist. "He prayed and went to the mosque just like the rest of us," said Fadia, 35, who grew up in the house across from his.

Hassan, a childhood friend of Al Nashar's who still lives in the neighborhood, said that he was an unusually hard-working but otherwise normal man who played soccer near the local mosque and talked about girls with his friends. Hassan added that he had only got into trouble once, during his second year of university, when he arrested for a day after going to "a suspicious mosque."

Al Nashar's family, interviewed in Al Ahram of 16 July, said they were in shock and could not believe that he could have had anything to do with the bombing. They said that, with a freshly minted PhD and a $58,000 scholarship from the National Research Center to pursue his research in the field of biochemistry, he had everything to lose.

Badreya Mahmoud, who lived downstairs from the Al Nashar family, said "the accusations are 100 percent lies. Everyone knows he is innocent and that they are a good family." Like many of the neighbors, she defended the Al Nashars' reputation emotionally, saying that when he came back from England on 30 June he didn’t act suspiciously and didn’t react in an unusual way when news of the London bombings broke.

Some reports, however, suggested that the husband of Al Nashar's sister Mona could be a link to fundamentalist groups. Neighbors of the Al Nashar family in Bassatine said that Mona had been made to wear the niqab, the full face veil considered extreme by most Egyptian Muslims.

Like his neighbors, Al Nashar's colleagues at the National Research Center painted a picture of an amiable if reserved man who excelled in his field. The National Research Center is a state-run Egyptian institution that only employs the top students in the natural sciences. Al Nashar started to work there after he obtained a Masters' degree at Cairo University in 1998 and the center later gave him funding to study in the US. But after a year studying at a university in North Carolina, Al Nashar decided to go to Leeds, which he felt was a better location for his research.

"Magdy specializes in bio-chemistry, particularly in biopolymers. The Center sent him on a scholarship to study in the US where they told him that the best place for his field is the UK. He studied for five years in Leeds, England. He did not have any problems during this time. He returned two weeks ago, submitted his documents, including his PhD certificate, and returned to his job, like anybody else would after finishing his studies," explained Dr. Hani Al Nazer, the director of the National Research Center.

"I don’t know him personally but he has a reputation for being clever, cooperative with his colleagues, a simple person who did not show any aggressive tendencies," Al Nazer added. "I was shocked when I heard that the British police suspected Magdy, particularly since his field is not linked at all with making bombs. However, we will wait and see. We should not jump to conclusions."



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