Cairo Refers 26 Hizbullah Suspects to Trial
Egypt has decided on a security court trial for 26 men accused of plotting attacks on tourist resorts and on ships in the Suez Canal on behalf of Hizbullah, the public prosecutor said on Sunday.
Charges include conspiracy to murder, spying for a foreign organization with the intent of conducting terrorist attacks and weapons possession, prosecutor Abdel Magid Mahmoud said in a statement.
State security courts were set up under Egypt”s emergency laws and have been in place since 1981 and their verdicts are final. The date of the trial has yet to be set.
Four of the accused men are on the run, including Lebanese alleged mastermind Mohammed Qubyan who is believed to have left Egypt. The others are hiding in the Sinai Peninsula”s mountains, a security official said.
The prosecution says the men have confessed to buying rifles, explosives and rocket propelled grenades and to storing bags and belts filled with powerful plastic explosives.
They also confessed to building tunnels to Gaza, monitoring tourist resorts in the Sinai and setting up front businesses, state news agency MENA reported.
The prosecutor said in April that 49 men were suspected of plotting attacks against Sinai tourist resorts and ships in the Suez Canal on the orders of Hizbullah.
The suspects include two Lebanese alleged Hizbullah ringleaders, five Palestinians, a Sudanese man and Egyptians.
Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah admitted in April that one of the captured men, Mohammed Youssef Mansour, identified as Sami Shehab, was a Hizbullah agent tasked with smuggling weapons to fighters in Gaza.
Defense lawyer Montasser el-Zayyat complained that the defendants will be unable to appeal the verdicts.
"They have no right to appeal. Even if they are found innocent the President of Egypt can still overrule the court”s decision," Zayyat told AFP.
Zayyat said the defendants had been tortured in detention and insisted that any confessions used as evidence in court should be dismissed.
Security officials said the defendants were examined by a doctor who found no evidence that they had been physically abused. Rights groups say torture is routine in Egypt.
Hizbullah has limited its attacks in the Middle East to Israel and Lebanon, from which Israel withdrew in 2000.
It fought a month-long war with Israel in 2006 that killed 1,200 Lebanese and more than 160 Israelis.
The arrests led to a war of words between Sunni Egypt and Hizbullah”s Shiite Iranian backers, with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit accusing Iran of using Hizbullah to gain a foothold in Egypt.
The alleged plot was one of three that Egyptian security services say they have disrupted since February, when a pipe bomb left under a concrete bench in a Cairo bazaar killed a French tourist.
Security officials said they have arrested members of an al-Qaida cell that carried out that attack.