Militants arrested in Egypt for Terror Plots

The Egyptian Interior Ministry said two
Belgians, nine French and several others from Egypt and other Arab
countries were arrested along with the American.
    “Investigations
have confirmed that those elements are related to some terrorist
organizations abroad,” the ministry said in a statement. “They were
seeking to recruit others, teach them destructive beliefs, urging them
for jihad, traveling to Iraq to carry out operations via other
countries in the region.”
    A U.S. official said an investigation is underway to determine how significant this group may have been.
    The
ministry said that members of the group were living in Egypt under the
guise of studying Arabic and Islamic studies. It did not provide names
or say how many Egyptians and Arabs were arrested.
    They were arrested about a week ago, and some had been studying at Al-Al,
Sunni Islam’s most important seat of learning, police officials said.
They spoke on condition on anonymity because they were not authorized
to speak to the media. It was not immediately clear if all the arrests
took place in Cairo or elsewhere in Egypt.
   All of the arrested were in jail pending further investigation, the ministry said.
    Egypt witnessed a string of homicide terror attacks in recent years at Sinai Peninsula tourist resorts.
    Last
week, an Egyptian state security court condemned to death three Islamic
militants convicted of taking part in homicide attacks that killed 34
people in 2004 on the Sinai resort of town of Taba.  
    The three belonged to the militant group “Tawhid andJihad,”
which Egyptian security officials and prosecutors accuse of carrying
out two other bombings against Sinai resorts that killed another 87
people — Sharm el-Sheik in July 2005 and Dahab in April.
    In
February, three British Muslims were released from an Egyptian prison
after spending nearly three years in custody for allegedly belonging to
a banned Islamic group. The three accused Egyptian authorities of
torturing them during their captivity, but the government denied the
allegations.
    Egypt operates under emergency
laws, which gives the government wide powers to detain suspects without
charging them. The laws have been in place since the assassination of
President Anwar Sadat in 1981 despite a growing chorus of opposition from both inside and outside the country.