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Egypt arrests al-Qaeda leaders' children
Egypt has detained three extradited sons of Muslim militant leaders, one of them the son of a senior member of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, a London-based Islamist said on Thursday. "Egyptian authorities were handed two in the past few months... The third was seen at Lazoghli (headquarters of Egypt's state security police) a few days ago, but it was not known when he was extradited," Yasser al-Sirry told Reuters. Sirry, speaking from London where he runs the Islamic Observation Centre rights watchdog, named the three juveniles, all under 18, as Hamza Medhat Mursi, Ismail Sayyed Imam al-Sherif and Khaled Murgan Salem. He quoted relatives as saying that Pakistan handed over Hamza and Khaled during the past four months, while Ismail was thought to have been extradited by Yemen. He did not say what charges they faced. Egyptian Interior Ministry officials were not available for comment. Islamists and lawyers say all three were born outside Egypt, while Hamza's mother was Pakistani. They said the three did not have organisational duties within al-Qaeda or the Egyptian Islamist group, Jihad. Hamza's father Medhat Mursi, known by the nom de guerre Abu Khabab, is the number three at al-Qaeda after bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri, Islamists say. Abu Khabab, a chemical engineer, is reported to be responsible for the development of chemical weapons for al-Qaeda. Ismail's father, Sayyed Imam al-Sherif, was a former leader of the secretive Jihad group before bin Laden's right-hand man Zawahri took over in the early 1990s. Zawahri then left the group in 1998 after joining al-Qaeda. Khaled's father, Murgan Salem, is the third man at Jihad, Islamists say. "The three are under 18. They are juveniles but held in adults' jails... This is a flagrant violation of Egyptian and international laws," Sirry said. Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-03-19 |
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