Returnees from Albania
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The case of the Returnees from Albania was a massive criminal trial in an Egyptian military court from February to April 1999. The trial is one of the principal sources of information (and allegations) about Sunni terrorist groups in the 1990s, especially al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya and its offshoot Egyptian Islamic Jihad headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri; it is a landmark case in the topics of extraordinary rendition and the credibility of the testimony of terrorism detainees.
The local Egyptian press coined the informal name of the case, "Returnees from Albania", which referred to a number of suspects who were captured in Albania and then somehow transported to Egypt, with little if any formal extradition process. Some reports use the term "the Albanian Arabs" for that group plus others who had visited them in Albania and were later extradited to Egypt by Azerbaijan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. The prosecution leaned somewhat on the testimony of the returnee Ahmad al-Naggar and on evidence and interrogation records that were collected in Albania with CIA assistance.
Documentation and terminology
A complete transcript of the trial and interrogations is not available. The partial transcripts, as well as the press reports from the time, are mostly in Arabic.
Those documents speak of "the jihad group" or "the jihad organization", meaning al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya as it was at that time. Most of al-Gama'a later renounced violence, but a violent residue called Islamic Jihad remained; that group was later known as Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) to distinguish it from Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The remnants of EIJ and at least one person in the violent fugitive component of Gama'a (namely Mohammad Hasan Khalil al-Hakim) have since merged with al-Qaeda.
Reportage of events in the early 1990s mentions one more group, or rather one more name for some of the same people: Vanguards of Conquest. That was the faction of EIJ that was led by al-Zawahiri after the capture and sentencing of 'Abbud al-Zumar, the first emir of EIJ.
The charges
Broadly, the aim of al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya was to bring about the destruction of the Egyptian government, followed by its replacement with a sharia-based Islamist regime. To get there, the plan was to kill and intimidate government members, destroy the Egyptian tourism industry, and create fear and distrust in the Egyptian population. In more detail, the trial addressed
- several bombings of banks
- the 1990 assassination of the chairman of the Egyptian parliament Dr. Rif'at al-Mahjub
- the 1993 assassination of Interior Minister Hassan al-Alfi, which killed four others also
- the 1993 assassination attempt against Prime Minister Atef Sedki, in which a child was killed
- the 1994 assassination of Major General Ra'uf Khayrat (assistant director of the Egyptian intelligence service) in Cairo
- the 1995 assassination of Egyptian attaché Ahmed Alaa Nazmi in Switzerland[1]
- the 1995 assassination attempt against President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa (26 June; EIJ claim responsibility)
- the 1995 bombing of Egypt's embassy in Pakistan, killing 15 people; an intended simultaneous mass murder of tourists at Khan al-Khalili did not materialize.
- the 1997 massacre of tourists at Luxor
The accused
There were altogether 107 accused persons, of whom 60 were tried in absentia. Twenty were acquitted, nine sentenced to death (all in absentia), 11 to life at hard labour, and 67 to sentences of from one to 25 years.
The trial concluded that the "constituent assembly" of al-Gama'a contained these fifteen names. [2][3][4][5][6][7]
| Ayman al-Zawahiri | Emir | Sentenced to death[8] | |
| Sa'id Imam bin Abdulaziz ash-Sharif, alias Dr. Fadl, alias Abdul-Qadr bin Abdulaziz سيد إمام بن عبد العزيز الشريف |
Religious expert | Captured in Yemen 2001, extradited to Egypt 2004 | Sentenced to (and serving) life |
| Abdullah Muhammad Rajab Abdul-Rahman[9] alias Ahmad Hasan Abu al-Khayr احمد حسن ابو الخير |
Special Actions Committee | ||
| Tariq Anwar Said Ahmed[10] طارق انور سيد احمد |
Special Actions Committee | ||
| Almakni (?) Mukhtar المكنى مختار |
Special Actions Committee | ||
| Muhammad al-Zawahiri محمد الظواهري
|
Shura, Military Committee | Extradited by the UAE early in 1999 | Under a death sentence[8]; probably still alive in April 2007[11] |
| Ahmed Salamah Mabruk alias Abu al-Faraj al-Masri احمد سلامه مبروك |
Shura, Operations boss, Special Actions Committee | Snatched in Baku in 1998, along with his computer, and rendered to Egypt | |
| Thirwat Salah Shihata[10] ثروت صلاح شحاته |
Shura, Security outside Egypt | Fled to Afghanistan or Pakistan | Sentenced to death for a second time |
| Murjan (or Murgan) Salim مرجان سالم |
Shura, Legal services | At large somewhere | Under a death sentence[8]; was demoted in Gama'a after several of his plots failed. |
| Adel Abdul-Quddus عادل عبد القدوس |
Families' services, travel facilitation | Free in Austria | Sentenced to death[8] and was already under a death sentence for the attempt against Sedki[12] |
| Ibrahim Eidarous ابراهيم عيداروس |
Finance (?) (see also Advice and Reform Committee) | Held in the UK until his death from natural causes in 2008; was wanted in the USA | Sentenced to life[8] |
| Adel Abdel Bary عادل عبد المجيد عبد الباري |
Information Committee (see also Advice and Reform Committee) | Held in the UK; wanted in the USA | Sentenced to death; was already under a death sentence from 1995[12] |
| Hani Muhammad al-Said al-Siba'i[10] هاني محمد السيد السياعي |
Media publicity boss | Free in the UK and still operating | Sentenced to 15 years[8] |
| Mahmoud Hisham Muhammad Mustafa al-Hanawi محمود هشام محمد مصطفى الحناوي |
Finance (?) | At large (Killed in 2005 in Chechnya according to al-Siba'i[13]) | |
| Nasr Fahmi Nasr Hassanein[10] نصر فهمي نصر حسنين |
Shura, Finance boss | At large; also wanted in the USA | Sentenced to death[8] |
| Ahmed Bassiouni Ahmed Dewidar احمد بسيوني احمد دويدار alias Abu Ismail |
Security within Egypt | Killed in Yemen July 2005[14][15] | Sentenced to 25 years |
The returnees themselves were around 14 in number. About 12 were snatched in Albania, one in Sofia, and one in Baku. One other was killed during the Tirana roundup, which occurred in July 1998. The returnees include:
| Shawqi Salama Mustafa Atiya شوقي سلامة مصطفى عطيه |
Ran the Tirana office |
| Ahmad Ibrahim al-Sayyid al-Naggar احمد ابراهيم السيد النجار |
Tirana; star witness; was under a death sentence from October 1997 |
| Muhammad Hassan Mahmud Tita | Tirana |
| Ahmad Isma'il 'Uthman | Tirana; was under a death sentence from March 1994 |
| 'Issam Abdul-Tawab Abdul-'Alim | Sofia |
| Ahmed Salama Mabruk احمد سلامه مبروك |
Baku |
Other notables include
| Ahmed Refa'i Taha أحمد رفاعي طه |
Former Emir of Gama'a | Held by Egypt since 2001 and probably still alive | Sentenced to death |
| Mohammad Zeki Mahjoub محمد زكي محجوب |
Special Actions Committee, and a terrorist trainer[12] | Under a form of house arrest in Canada | Sentenced to 15 years[12] |
| Yassir al-Sirri ياسر السري |
Has safe haven in the UK; wanted in the USA in the case against Lynne Stewart and others | Sentenced to death; was already under a death sentence for his part in the attempt against Sedki, in which a random child was killed[8] | |
| Magdi Ibrahim al-Sayyid al-Naggar مجدي ابراهيم السيد النجار |
Brother of Ahmad al-Naggar |
Acquitted in absentia | |
| Abdel-Akher Hammad عبد الآخر حماد |
A cleric | Now free in Egypt | Sentenced to death[8] but recanted |
| El-Sayed Abdel-Maqsud السيد عبد المقصود |
Headed the Tirana office[8] | Escaped the roundup in Albania and reached the UK, where he got political asylum | Sentenced to 10 years[8] |
| Muhammad al-Islambouli محمد الإسلامبولي |
(brother of assassin Khalid al-Islambouli) | Said to be now in al-Qaeda; see al-Hukaymah | Sentenced to death[8] |
| Khalid Abdullah |
(former husband of Zaynab Khadr) | Involved in 1996 Attack on the Egyptian Embassy in Pakistan | Sentenced to prison[16] |
Funding and travel
Ahmad al-Naggar's controversial confession says that the money involved was not great and that it basically "came from Usama bin Ladin". But how exactly the agents in Albania got hold of money is not so simple. It seems probable that one or more Sunni terrorist charities were involved; both al-Haramain Foundation and Global Relief Foundation had branches in Tirana, and a third charity front, Benevolence International Foundation, had an office in Baku.[10] (Al-Naggar himself held a low-paid job in Tirana as a teacher of Arabic for the Revival of Islamic Heritage Society, but that group was not accused nor incriminated in any way in the Returnees affair. On the contrary, al-Naggar was expected to get a job in Albania and give 10% of his wages to the terrorist group of which he himself was a member.)
References
- ^ MIPT profile of the "International Justice Group", an alias of al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya at that time
- ^ Trancript of part of al-Naggar's testimony, part 1 of 6, Middle East Transparent
- ^ Trancript of part of al-Naggar's testimony, part 2 of 6, Middle East Transparent
- ^ Trancript of part of al-Naggar's testimony, part 3 of 6, Middle East Transparent
- ^ Trancript of part of al-Naggar's testimony, part 4 of 6, Middle East Transparent
- ^ Trancript of part of al-Naggar's testimony, part 5 of 6, Middle East Transparent
- ^ Trancript of part of al-Naggar's testimony, part 6 of 6, Middle East Transparent
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Egypt's most wanted, al-Ahram Weekly, 18 October 2001
- ^ SDN and SDGT list, United States Department of the Treasury
- ^ a b c d e UN list of affiliates of al-Qaeda and the Taliban
- ^ Top Al Qaeda Ideolgue and Zawahiri's Brother to Denounce Violence, AP, 20 April 2007
- ^ a b c d UNHCR information on various wanted Egyptians, originally from the Government of Canada
- ^ Martyrdom of Hisham al-Hanawi (etc.), al-Maqreze Center for Historical Studies (=Hani al-Siba'i), in Arabic, 17 April 2005
- ^ Yemeni press report on the death of Ahmed Dewidar, in Arabic
- ^ Reuters report on the death of Ahmed Dewidar
- ^ Shephard, Michelle (2008). Guantanamo's Child. John Wiley & Sons.
Some of the 1999 coverage by Asharq al-Awsat, in English translation by Foreign Broadcast Information Service:
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/1999/03/990306-cairo.htm
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/1999/03/990306-cairo-2.htm
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/1999/03/990306-cairo-3.htm
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/1999/03/990306-cairo-4.htm
A front page article, not available online, but quoted by various other writers:
Andrew Higgins and Christopher Cooper, Cloak and Dagger: A CIA-Backed Team Used Brutal Means to Crack Terror Cell, Wall Street Journal, 20 November 2001