Cairo Magazine - Bad chemistry

Magdi Al Nashar's family lives on the second floor of this building in Bassatine.

Tara Todras-Whitehill

Magdi Al Nashar, touted by the British press as the mastermind behind the terror attacks on London became one of the most wanted men in the world. But only a few days after his arrest, the Ministry of Interior seems to think that Al Nashar had nothing to do with the bombings.

The ministry confirmed on 15 July that it was holding Al Nashar, 33. 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 following afternoon prayers.

“The last time I saw him was Thursday [14 July] inside the mosque. There were 75 officers who 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 reported.

No formal charges have been brought against Al Nashar by either the British or Egyptian governments. A team of British investigators flew to Cairo over the weekend to interrogate him and may seek his extradition. But while Egyptian officials initially said they would extradite Al Nashar if evidence against him emerged, they later changed their minds.

Unusually, a senior official shared some of Al Nashar’s testimony with Al Ahram of 18 July, in which he clarifies his relationship with confirmed bomber Hasib Hussein, who Al Nashar helped find a home in Leeds, England.

“I met Hasib Hussein in the Leeds University mosque. He asked me to help him find a place to stay in and I managed to find him a house that was owned by an Iraqi doctor,” Al Nashar is alleged to have told his interrogators. “I never visited Hussein in the house and I have not planned for, funded or helped in the bombings, or even taken part in manufacturing the explosives that the police said they found in the flat in Leeds. I am challenging the British authorities to prove that I have a link to the attacks or that I knew they were going to take place. I was as shocked as anyone else when I heard the news. I think that the people who are behind the attacks are anything but Muslims and that they have badly harmed the image of Islam and Arabs in England.”

Al Nashar also admitted to having keys to the home.

Minister of Interior Habib Al Adli took the surprising step of telling reporters that Al Nashar “has no links with Al Qaeda,” suggesting that he believes the man is innocent.

Attorney General Maher Abdel Wahed said that no case has been filed against Al Nashar and that the British authorities have not contacted Egypt about it.

“If it is proved that he has a link to the attacks, he will be tried in Egypt by Egyptian judges,” said Abdel Wahed. “The Egyptian constitution prohibits the extradition of any Egyptian citizen to another country.”

There is some speculation that Egypt’s refusal to extradite Al Nashar may have to do with a longstanding grievance against Britain, which has refused to extradite wanted Islamists to Egypt for many years.

“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,” one security official told Cairo, adding that President Hosni Mubarak has repeatedly called for an international anti-terrorism conference.

Neighbors in Bassatine described Al Nashar, who left Egypt over five years ago to study first 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.

“He has always been a person loved by everyone since he was young and he was one of the top students in his school. My brother was here before the bombings took place and he was quite astonished and sad when [when he heard of them]. It is not true that we are an extremist family. We are a very ordinary family and our family did their best to give us the best education. Magdi didn’t have so many friends but was loved and respected by everyone, even by his Christian neighbors, who broke down in tears after they discovered he was arrested,” said Al Nashar’s brother Mohammed, a musician.

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 said Al Nashar had only gotten into trouble once, during his second year of university, when he was arrested after going to “a suspicious mosque.” Police confirmed that Al Nashar was arrested in 1992 after being in contact with a man who later turned out to have been involved in the 1997 Luxor massacre. But Al Nashar, who was 20 at the time, was never charged and was only held for a day.

Relatives and neighbors say that Al Nashar had everything to lose: he had recently finished his PhD and had won a $58,000 scholarship from the National Research Center to pursue research in the field of biochemistry.

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 employs top students in the natural sciences. Al Nashar started working there after he obtained a master’s degree at Cairo University in 1998, and the center later gave him funding to study in the US. But after a year of study at a university in North Carolina, Al Nashar decided to go to Leeds, which he felt was a better location for his research and where he had obtained a scholarship.

“Magdi specializes in biochemistry, 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 and 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 Magdi, particularly since his field of study and research is not linked at all with making bombs. However, we will wait and see. We should not jump to conclusions.”

As of press time, there were reports that Al Nashar would soon be released.