Title: Part 3 of Islamic Jihad Trial Testimony

Document Number: FBIS-NES-1999-0309
Document Type: Daily Report
Document Title: FBIS Translated Text
Document Region: Near East/South Asia
Document Date: 08 Mar 1999
Division: Arab Africa
Subdivision: Egypt
Sourceline: MM0903150599 London Al-Sharq al-Awsat in Arabic 8 Mar 99 p 10
AFS Number: MM0903150599
Citysource: London Al-Sharq al-Awsat
Language: Arabic
N/A
Subslug: Part three of report by Khalid Sharaf-al-Din from Cairo: "Bin-Ladin
Backed Down on Entering Egypt and Led a Fundamentalist Delegation on a
Secret Visit to Albania. Islamic Group Members Planned to Rob Jewelry
Shops in Amman, Sanaa, and Jeddah To Finance Their Operations"


[FBIS Translated Text] The Military Court's investigation of the Returnees
from Albania Organization was sensational and full of surprises. A number
of defendants confirmed that the Islamic Group Organization [IG], which
is banned in Egypt, proposed to Usamah Bin-Ladin a plan for hiding him
inside Egyptian territory. They stressed that the plan required Bin-Ladin
to undergo plastic surgery and change some of his physical features,
enter Egypt with forged travel documents, and hide in a remote area in
Upper Egypt.
In the investigations, parts of which Al-Sharq al-Awsat has seen, the
defendants said that Bin-Ladin was convinced by this plan and began to
study it on the basis of the information that the IG gave him about some
towns in Upper Egypt, like al-Minya, Asyut, Suhaj, Qina, and others. It
also provided him with other information about the population,
demography, and topography of these governorates and available security
measures. The defendants added: Bin-Ladin's escape to Egypt would have
been the deal of a lifetime for him and the IG because it was the only
country where no one would have suspected him living in. His funds would
have been a big source of financing that the IG could never dream of,
specially after its financial resources diminished substantially as a
result of the tight Egyptian security cordon.
The defendants also said in the investigations: The plan was cancelled
following contacts between Bin-Ladin and senior leaders from the Jihad
Organization, foremost of them Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri who warned him of
the Egyptian security services. Al-Zawahiri also stressed to him that
escaping to and hiding in Egypt would be a big risk in view of the
country's flat lands and the security services' strong hold on the
fundamentalist organizations.
They added that Bin-Ladin ruled out this plan totally but thought of it
again after the US strike on his positions in Afghanistan.

ROBBING JEWELRY SHOPS IN ARAB COUNTRIES [subhead]

There was no end to the surprises that emerged from the confessions made
by members of the Returnees from Albania Organization, or the Arab
Balkans as they are called. They confirmed that some members planned to
rob jewelry shops in some Arab countries in order to finance the
Organization's activities, spend on its members' travel between various
countries, forge official documents and passports, and provide the
necessary funds for carrying out the Organization's plans inside Egypt.
Defendant 'Isam 'Abd-al-Tawwab 'Abd-al-'Alim's confessions confirmed that some
members planned to rob jewelry shops in the Jordanian capital Amman, the
Yemeni capital Sanaa, and the Saudi city of Jeddah. A special fatwa
[religious legal ruling] was issued for that purpose by some
fundamentalist shaykhs. The defendant added: Defendants 'Isam Shu'ayb and
Faysal Muhammad 'Ayyad were supposed to take part in this plan under the
supervision of leader Usamah Siddiq who prepared the plan and its details
during his stay in a number of Arab countries (Yemen and Saudi Arabia).
But the group, which lived in Jordan for a long time, failed to carry out
the robbery after failing to secure the necessary weapons for raiding the
shops. They also realized the difficulty of completing the operation in a
strange country where they had no knowledge of any safe routes to escape
with their loot and did not know how to sell the jewelry for cash or how
to smuggle it out of Jordan.
Defendant 'Isam 'Abd-al-Tawwab added: The Organization's group that had lived
in Jordan for a long time told leader Usamah Siddiq that it could not
carry out the plan. Orders were then issued not to carry it out for the
sake of protecting the members.
The defendant had made detailed confessions about the Organization's
activities to the Higher State Security Prosecution Office before the
case was referred to the Military Court. He confessed that he fled from
Egypt in 1992 after his group in Bani Suwayf killed a dissident member
called Husam al-Batuji and he was accused of being involved in the
killing. He added that he moved between several Arab countries with
forged documents and that leaders of the banned Jihad Organization who
lived in London provided him with the necessary funds for his travels
before he settled in Pristina. He added that he met senior leader Ahmad
al-Najjar in Albania and learned from him about the Organization's
organizational structure and the nature of its objective to bring down
Egypt's regime. He noted that the Organization operated as an integrated
structure of clusters that was divided into a number of committees. The
leading committee was the one charged with carrying out armed terrorist
operations inside Egypt. It was followed by the security committee which
was in charge of training members on the ways of dealing with the
security organs, avoiding being followed, and standing fast during
interrogations. There was the shari'ah committee which taught members the
Organization's ideas and the social one which took care of the detained
members' families.
The defendant revealed that several organizational meetings were held
abroad which were attended by the Organization leader Ayman al-Zawahiri
and others residing in London who used forged travel documents. He
confirmed that there were a number of splits and disputes between the
members during the period that preceded its discovery by the Egyptian
security services. He said that fugitive defendant Hasan 'Ujayzah
announced that he had split from the group led by Ayman al-Zawahiri. He
added: Some members accused 'Ujayzah of having more extremist ideas since
he believed that there was no proscription on taking money while Jihad
required a fatwa for specific cases, similar to the ones issued to rob
jewelry shops in Jordan.

'ISAM, HUSAM, AND MAJOR GENERAL KHAYRAT [subhead]

The fundamentalist organizations' activities outside Egypt in addition
to their local ones were revealed by the confessions of the defendants in
this exceptionally complicated judicial and organizational issue.
We stay with defendant 'Isam 'Abd-al-Tawwab 'Abd-al-'Alim. He is a
controversial figure who was involved in several incidents. His
activities span the whole history of the IG for more than 21 years. He
always played the very important role of the mediator between a number of
leaders, most noticeably between Usamah Siddiq and defendant Husam
Nuwayr. The latter had already been indicted in the assassination of Maj.
Gen. Ra'uf Khayrat, Assistant Director of the Egyptian State Security
Intelligence Service. He also provided the funds and brought the weapons
that were used in the nine bank explosions and helped monitor a number of
Egyptian security officials. He carried out the decision to assassinate
Khayrat when he prepared an automatic rifle and silencer. He then told
Tal'at Yasin Hammam of the operation's success before the latter was
killed in a confrontation with the security services. He was also in
charge of distributing funds to the detainees' families. His career began
when he was arrested in the Adam Mosque incident in 'Ayn Shams and
imprisoned for 10 months. He said in his confessions that he was exempted
from military service because his brother was among the detained IG
members. He confessed that his brother convinced him to join the group.
He added that the reason he confessed about Hasan Salih was because the
latter was his cellmate during his imprisonment. All he knew about Tal'at
Yasin Hammam was that he was the IG prince as reported in the press.
But all the investigations and the confessions made by the other
defendants confirmed that he was Hammam's right-hand man who called him
the IG's dynamo. Preparations for every operation began and ended with
him. He was the one who issued the statements to news agencies announcing
the IG's responsibility for these operations. He said that the
Organization's aim was to hit the state's economic foundations by
undertaking hostile actions that targeted banks in particular because
they did not follow Islamic shari'ah. He added that the Ibn-Taymiyah's
fatwa that the Tatars must be fought applied to the banks.
He asked the Organization's members to use aliases and provided them
with forged documents for traveling from Egypt to Afghanistan or the
Balkans. Yet he used all the "No's" in the Arabic language to deny what
the investigations said about him. He said that his detained colleagues'
confessions against him were untrue and that the material seized did not
belong him and that it was the first time that he saw it.
The case papers also show that he denied all the evidence against him
presented by the Egyptian security organs. "No" was the only word he kept
repeating during the investigations with him that were held before Hisham
Saraya, the Higher States Security's Prosecutor General.