Egypt to question “Hezbollah plotters” further
Egypt”s public prosecutor ordered on Thursday that 49 people held for plotting attacks on behalf of Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah be kept in custody for a further 15 days, a judicial source said.
"The public prosecutor decided to detain the members of the group affiliated with Hezbollah for 15 days for questioning on suspicion of membership in a clandestine organisation calling for rebellion" against the country”s leadership, the source said.
On Wednesday, a statement from the prosecutor said an investigation determined the men had been commissioned by Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah to conduct attacks in Egypt.
It was not immediately clear when the arrests were made. The detention may be renewed every 15 days for six months, when the prosecution must either charge them or release them.
The suspects are also accused of espionage, forging official documents and preparing explosives.
Hezbollah has not commented on the allegations.
On Thursday, state media reported that one of those arrested, Sami Hani Shihab, was suspected of heading a Hezbollah unit responsible for neighbouring states and that Palestinians and Sudanese were among those arrested.
Montassar el-Zayat, a lawyer for some of the defendants, said Shihab”s brother had asked him to represent him but he had not been allowed to see him or attend interrogations.
Zayat accused security of bringing politically motivated charges against the suspects.
"My impression is that it is a fabricated case created by Egyptian security in the context of bad relations between Hezbollah and Egypt. It is a pressure card," he said.
Hezbollah, which is backed by Egypt”s regional rivals Iran and Syria, is a vocal supporter of Hamas, the Islamist rulers of the Gaza Strip and has lashed out at Egypt for closing its crossing with the Palestinian enclave.
In December, after Israel launched a devastating offensive in Gaza, Nasrallah called on Egyptians to take to the streets in their millions to force open the crossing and urged Egyptian army commanders to resign in protest.
Egyptian officials accused Nasrallah of fomenting sedition and state media branded him an "Iranian agent."
Egypt, a mostly Sunni Muslim country, has accused the Shiite government of Iran and Hezbollah of conspiring to spread Shiite ideology in the region.
The general prosecutor listed "spreading Shiite ideology" as one of the aims of the detained men.
Egypt and Iran broke off relations a year after Islamist revolutionaries overthrew Iran”s pro-Western shah in 1979.
Iran opposed Cairo”s 1979 peace treaty with Israel and named a street in Tehran after the assassin of Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president killed by an Egyptian Islamist militant in 1981.