Hizbullah Cell Recived Huge Sums of Money to carry terror Acts
The Egyptian weekly al-Mussawar magazine disclosed on Saturday that the recently captured Hizbullah cell in Egypt has been operating since 2003 and has received large sums of money to carry out terrorist acts inside Egypt.
The weekly published report stated that the main defendant in the case Muhammed Yussef Mansour a Lebanese a.k.a Sami Shehab was delegated by Hizbullah”s Unit 1800 to establish, support and follow up the functions and operations of the cell.
"The cell received large sums of money from Hizbullah to carry out terrorist acts and scare tourists in the Sinai as well as ships passing through the Suez Canal." The magazine said.
Mansour”s main contact was Muhammed Qabalan who heads Unit 1800. Qabalan instructed Mansour to assist Palestinian elements to sneak into Egypt for training and arms. He was also tasked with recruiting Palestinian university students in Egypt for the same task.
Mansour entered Egypt with an assumed name and a fake passport twice each time using a different name. He succeeded in recruiting an Egyptian named Nasser Khalil Abu Amra, known to be a member of the banned Islamic Brotherhood Organization.
Another recruited cell member was a Palestinian refugee living in Egypt named Nemr al-Tawil. The cell flourished in time to include members from Port Said and from Syria.
Investigations revealed that the cell worked on purchasing fish shop in Port Said as a guise for carrying and planning out their operations.
A Palestinian defendant in the case named Abdel Fatah Baraka aged 18, a high school student residing in Gaza was smuggled via underground tunnels from Gaza into Sinai confessed that Mansour had wanted to send him to Lebanon for military training.
Baraka was arrested by Egyptian police on the day he was supposed to receive his fake traveling documents.
Mansour brought in an explosive expert from Lebanon to Cairo to work on making bombs with the aim of striking against the tourist industry in Egypt, al-Mussawar said.
The magazine added that all cell members received large sums of money to from Hizbullah to carry out front commercial activities.