Egypt Arrests 49 In Planned Attacks

Printer-friendly versionSend to friendPDF version CAIRO -- Egypt said it has cracked a major Hezbollah network operating within its borders, in a sign the confrontation in the Mideast between U.S. allies and more radical forces aligned with Iran is intensifying. In recent days, Egyptian authorities have said 49 Hezbollah members and sympathizers were arrested on Egyptian soil between November and January. Led by a Lebanese man known as Sami Shihab, they are suspected of smuggling weapons and ammunition, plotting attacks, and spying, Egyptian officials said. Mr. Shihab's lawyer said his client had no plans to hurt Egypt. The long-simmering hostility between Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite movement with a powerful military wing whose main sponsor is Iran, and the Egyptian government flared up in January during Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip. Egypt kept its border with Gaza closed and refused to help Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement that governs the strip. The U.S. classifies both Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations. At the time, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, whose group fought a bloody war against Israel in 2006, accused Cairo of siding with the "Zionist enemy" and urged Egyptian soldiers to rise up against the Egyptian government. But until now, Hezbollah has portrayed itself as a purely Lebanese force and denied it operates in other Arab countries. This changed with Mr. Nasrallah's appearance on Al Manar, the group's satellite-television channel, which is seen throughout the region. In the TV address, broadcast Friday, Mr. Nasrallah rejected Egyptian accusations that Hezbollah planned attacks within Egypt, quipping that Egypt's chief prosecutor should be "writing scenarios for the movie industry." But he also said that Mr. Shihab was indeed a Hezbollah operative, heading a cell with as many as 10 members. According to Mr. Nasrallah, the cell provided "logistical support to help the Palestinian brothers in transporting ammunition and individuals for the benefit of the resistance inside Palestine." Israel has long accused Hezbollah and Iran of building up Hamas's firepower and of shipping explosives and rockets into the Gaza Strip through a network of tunnels across the Egyptian border. Israeli officials also complained before the January fighting that Cairo wasn't doing enough to thwart this trafficking. Israel's inability to wipe out Hezbollah in the 2006 war turned Mr. Nasrallah into a hero across the Arab world. But many Egyptians, while sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, were outraged by Hezbollah's admission of operations inside their country, which has been at peace with the Jewish state for 30 years. "You cannot target Israel from Egypt without targeting Egypt itself," said parliamentary opposition leader Mahmoud Abaza, head of the Wafd Party. Egypt's state media spared no vitriol. Sunday's edition of the Al Gomhuria daily dedicated its front page to an angry editorial headlined "The Criminal is Unrepentant," telling Mr. Nasrallah that "the garbage dump of history is full of people like you." Al Ahram, the government's key mouthpiece, cited security officials as saying the alleged network included 12 Egyptians with other members of Palestinian, Lebanese, Syrian and Sudanese origin. The officials said the suspects were found with $2 million in funds and stockpiles of weapons and ammunition, according to the Al Ahram report. They had rented a entire building in Cairo and properties in southern Egypt, along the Israeli border and in Red Sea tourist resorts, as well as a villa on the Suez Canal used to "monitor and target ships." Montasser al Zayat, a prominent Islamist lawyer who represents Mr. Shihab and some of the other detainees, said his clients "were not targeting Egypt and only supporting the Palestinians."