(2) Act 2 -El Mujahid-(The Struggler)

The Judge Arrives

The attack which destroyed the Saif el Adel police station made headlines in many Egyptian Dailies in 1990. The destruction of an entire precinct and the deaths of fifteen officers including the station’s commander was a cataclysmic event for the state of Egypt. However, it was in one sense a large stone thrown into a lake just before the first terrible gust of a storm. Its ripples would in time fade away amongst the suddenly tumultuous waves of that decade. That storm was the previously mention rebellion of Gamaa Islamiyya against the Jahillyya government which arrived in 1992 just two years after the Saif al Adel was burned down.

It was this climate that allowed the destruction of the station to be woven into the fabric of terrorism and insecurity which dominated all of the 1990s. Many newspaper reporters, journalists and police officials placed the Struggler and his one man war against injustice into a category they already knew and understood. Even if he wasn’t a member of the militant cells he certainly shared their goals and their violent methods, he spoke using religious rhetoric and had used it to justify killing government officials.

He was therefore naturally categorized as a terrorist, which automatically meant assigning a member of State Security to capture him. The man they chose was Captain Mohamed Ansari, whose extensive cooperation granted me access to many of the more intimate details I’ve related in this story, including access to special witnesses such as one of Sufyan el Amr’s living sons who still lives under police protection.

Ansari, who’s hunt for the Struggler would span almost five years, was a veteran counterterrorism agent who had spent years tracking down the men connected to the assassination of Anwar Sadat. He was also a solid investigator with a talent for gaining the cooperation of reluctant witnesses and accomplices in crime without resorting to the Egyptian policemen’s standard tools of interrogation, the club and the car battery.

Ansari, as he related to me after retiring in 2004, was ambivalent toward the case when he started.

Via Mohamed Ansari

“I categorized him, the Struggler, into the Islamist terrorist category that I was used to working with. After all, catching the Ikwhen and the Jihadists was what I was best at. My nickname among my colleagues was ‘the barber’ because I shaved the beard off of the first terrorist I ever interrogated. It was humiliating enough that he confessed everything. I assumed this case would just be very standard.”

Assigned to bring in the Struggler in October of 1990, Ansari arrived at the ruins of the Saif el Adel police station which was under the swift protection of Central Security police.

“I was assigned three other agents to work with on site who had been working on the case previously. They were all professionals, though one was a little young for my tastes. We began by inspecting the damage that was done to the building while the agents filled me in on what officers who had survived the attack told them.”

The chronology of the attack on the Saif el Adel station, compiled by State Security at the time read as below:

Around 2:30am on September 21: 20 officers in two police lorries and one truck leave the police station for the Moqattam Hills to join their colleagues from other precincts, under the supervision of Captain Hamdeen Amgad.

Around 3:15am: The police truck carrying Capatin Amgad reports suffering engine trouble and pulls over for maintenance in Moqattam leaving the rest of the convoy to continue to the hill.

Around 4:30am: As the sun rises a sudden blast occurs inside the police armory at the station blowing out the rooms on the first floor and causing a fire in the police compound and on the second floor.

Also at around 4:30am: The police truck that pulled over for repairs appears outside the gate of the station compound and rams head on into the wall. Wired with explosives and cans of gasoline, the car blasts a hole in the wall damaging two lorries parked inside and sending a pillar of fire into the sky which is seen for kilometers. The remains of Captain Amgad and two other officers are found inside the remains of the car later.

Around 4:35am: Police officers Malek and Soliman, and State Security agents Ahmed and Bassem encounter a masked man in a red and black kefeyah while guarding the entrance to a special holding area on the second floor adjacent to station’s Commander Mahmud’s office. The assailant beats all four officers senseless. No officers inside the compound trying to extinguish the fire and search for survivors report spying the man.

Around 4:45am: Officers Mohamed, Ismail, and Mamduh, report seeing Commander Shafiq Mahmud and eight other men being loaded into the back of a police lorry at gunpoint by a masked man in a red and black kefeyah. The officers attempt to subdue the suspect. The officers fire on the suspect but are unable to prevent him from loading the captives into the lorry. As they attempt to reload, the suspect assaults the three officers and disables them. Other officers spot the commotion and try to assist before the masked man jumps into the lorry and drives it away through the blast hole in the wall. Other armed officers attempt to shoot the suspect and disable the vehicle but are unsuccessful. Several other officers are run over by the lorry as it escapes. There are no fatalities.

Around 6:00am: Officers find the burned remains of the stolen lorry and nine men inside its carriage. The men are Commander Shafiq Mahmud, State Security Agents Hassan Khattab and Hussein Ramy. Sufyan el Amr, Mohsen Sufyan, Akbar Sufyan, Adham Sufyan, Suhayl Ismail, and Gamal Lahabi.

In addition to the nine men who died on the hill in Moqattam six police officers were killed in the attack on the station including those in the truck. With no witnesses coming forward from Moqattam Captain Ansari’s men quickly advocated for random sweeps and detentions of people in the area. The counterterrorism veteran however preferred a different approach.

“When I visited the wreckage of the building I consulted the explosive experts who had analyzed the blast in the munitions room, they concluded it had been caused by a remote control operated bomb placed next to the munitions which happened to rest just next to the station’s gas lines. I knew then that someone with knowledge of the station had helped this Struggler plan out the attack.”
It didn’t take Captain Ansari long to find his chief suspect.

“I looked at the nine men who had been burned to death in the lorry on Moqattam and it was pretty obvious eight of them were directly connected to the Struggler. The Commander and the State Security agents had been behind the interrogations of the men from Moqattam he had tried to avenge, while Suhayl, his sons and Sufyan were all involved in the drug trade he was trying to crush. In truth, they all had a very obvious history together. They were also all supposed to be at the station the morning of the attack, with Commander Mahmud, the Suhayl family and Sufyan all living at the station under protection of State Security.

Then, though, there was Lahabi, a very simple electrician who by the accounts of the officers had not been seen inside the building before it was attacked and who had done a number of jobs inside the station before. We very quickly had our man and we quickly discovered he was far from a shameless person.”

Lahabi, as it turned out, was well known among the police and ordinary people for overcharging his services and outright stealing from his clients, except from the police whom he worked for next to nothing. He was also known to be addicted to heroin and had tried his hand at a number of petty crimes to try and get money. Police at the station knew of his past but tolerated it in light of his cheap reates and the fact as he often kissed up to the officers hoping for favors and a little extra bakhsheeh.

“As soon as we found out from the officers at the station that Lahabi had repaired some of the wiring inside the police armory five days before the attack, my men, my three agents, went to Lahabi’s home where his wife, I think she was relieved to be rid of her grimy and greedy husband, was more than happy to talk about his activities. She described how he had come into more money lately after being offered a job by some figure he would only identify as ‘Mohandis Miim ’.

They asked if she had seen anything related to this work. The only thing she thought might be relevant was a night when she had found him in their kitchen testing the signal and receiver for some device he wanted to switch on with a remote button. He had told her it was for a car door.”

Ansari’s colleagues also came back from Lahabi’s home with a list detailing the men he hired for certain jobs throughout the year and how much he owed them. The last man he had worked with, the man he had hired for the job in the armory, was someone by the name of Abu Bakr Baky.

                “I knew there was a very strong chance it was a false name,” Ansari said. “But at the same time I believed it was more than coincidence that the father’s name of one of the suspects who had been picked up by the police just before the attack had been named Baky and that this Baky had not only had past history with the police but had also suffered the trauma of having his daughter assaulted by one of the men who was burned.”

             Baky is an extremely rare name in Egypt, so much so that many Egyptians including myself do not know its meaning or origin.

           “Luckily one of the officers at the station could recall which home Mr. Baky had been taken from in Moqattam. I decided to pay a visit to the home myself, passing myself off as a newspaper reporter. Not surprisingly, Mr. Baky was reluctant to speak to me at first and it took several more attempts before he finally opened his door to me.”

         Having convinced Mr. Baky that he was a reporter for an American news agency covering the recent torture of men by the police and that he who would keep his identity secret, he proceeded to ask him questions about his detention.

          “I tried to make my questions to draw out his sentiments about the authorities. I knew he was too old and too pudgy to be the man people had been describing as the Struggler but I thought he might have something to do with the man behind the mask; again I was still thinking we were chasing a member of some Islamist group and when Mr. Baky admitted upfront to having been in the Brotherhood I was more and more certain I was on the right track.”

          Early in their ‘interview’ Mr. Hussein’s deaf daughter Fatimah served her father’s guest tea.

“I smiled at her in thanks as she put that small plastic tray in front of me in that cramped little room she shared with her whole family. She smiled back very shly. I remember how pale her face seemed. There was a real lack of color that was just overshadowed by the very bright orange headscarf with black stars she had wrapped around her head. She was small, and pretty but my eyes didn’t linger long on her as her father was right there. I worried I had lingered too long because as she left, he grabbed a hold of her and signed something to her I couldn’t understand; he seemed very upset. I was worried my glances had gotten the poor girl in trouble but Mr. Baky explained that he just wanted her to stay around the house that evening.

        By that time, I felt we had reached the point where I could ask him a bolder question.

       ‘Mr. Baky,’ I said. ‘Before I leave here can I ask you one more question.”

      ‘You are welcome.’

      ‘What do you think about the actions the man known as the Struggler took? Are they justified in your opinion?’

      Mr. Baky put down his tea, which he had consumed up to the bottom filled with tiny grains, and stared at me. I could tell he was trying to read me.

     ‘I swear to God,’ He said, rubbing his palms together and opening them up before me. ‘I wipe my hands clean of that whole affair.’

     ‘Does that mean you don’t agree with what he did?’

     I could sense he was becoming wary of me so I told him I was just trying to clarify his statement for my article.

    He leaned back a little and rubbed the calluses on his hands.

   ‘Sir, rest assured, whether that young man was right or wrong for what he did to those men I’m sure he will receive a just judgment as we all must.’

    “When he said that, I was sure I was chasing the right rabbit. I told my men to monitor his home as often as they could. They kept tabs on him for some months but they never reported anything very out of the ordinary apart from a few times he yelled at his daughter.”

      The surveillance of Mr. Baky continued for almost six months, well into the next year but with little results. Meanwhile, corrupt officers, government officials and petty criminals of various kinds across Moqattam and other areas of Cairo such as the City of the Dead and Imbabah began turning up beaten or dead. Usually the latter was reserved exclusively for anyone in a uniform or suit. Drug dealers, and common thieves tended to get off with just a beating, a standard punishment for those who snatch purses and wallets when they are caught in most Cairo neighborhoods.

      Captain Ansari requested more men to track down the Struggler, who seemed to have a talent for navigating around the police and their plainclothes counterparts with impunity. His request was refused, and pressure began to mount from his superiors to catch the vigilante.

Via Captain Ansari

      “Those above me always worried more about having arrests they could report to the interior ministry rather than whether or not those arrested were the right men. Taking my time was what defined my style of investigation. I still thought even after six months that something would come up with Mr. Baky.”

       One day in March of 1991, Captain Ansari decided to enter Moqattam himself and monitor the Baky home.

      “I dressed in some shabbier looking clothes and went into the area pretending that I was visiting a relative. No one bothered me so I must have disguised myself well. I took a spot at a corner ahwa and ordered some Nescafe. My men had been pushing me to just arrest Mr. Baky and torture him again but I had refused. Torture was only applicable in certain situations for me, and while it provides many confessions it didn’t always give you good information.

       Still, I knew we only had so much time left to produce results and I was desperate to catch the man behind the mask. A plainclothes officer in Imbabah had been beaten only two nights previously while trying to take a bribe from a fruit vendor; that had come after the death of Dr. Hany Habib, a leading state prosecutor who had put dozens of Islamists and Muslim Brothers behind bars, and two police conscripts who were guarding him. They had been thrown off the roof of the bludgeoned Dr’s building.

             So, I waited watching Mr. Baky’s door watching as the sun started moving across the sky. I had started to wonder if I could keep from arousing the suspicions of the people in the neighborhood if I stayed in the ahwa when the door to his home finally opened. It was Mr. Baky’s daughter who emerged, walking towards the direction of a market I had passed on my way into the street.

            She didn’t spy me as she passed and I began to wonder where she was going. Her father’s stern warning seemed not to have dissuaded her from going out. It would take more than a trip to the market to convince her to defy her father’s wish in such a way. I hesitated for a moment or two but decided to listen to my instincts and go after her.

              It was enough to track her bright headscarf through those dirty brick streets. I kept my distance though following her to a microbus station at the edge of Moqattam. She grabbed a bus and I managed to get a taxi just in time. The driver, himself a former policeman, didn’t hesitate to follow the bus when I showed him my ID card. She got off at a stop just in front of the Sultan Hassan Mosque I told the driver to park the car opposite her and wait a few minutes until she had disappeared from view. I gave him some money and got out on foot, discarding my jacket so I looked slightly different and followed after her. I managed to catch sight of her as she walked up sfsadfhjask street towards the citadel of Salahudin.

           It had been years since I had done any sort of undercover work, I kept worrying she would spot me but she never changed her course suddenly. I followed her from a distance of about twenty meters, just in front of castle’s outer walls, and watched as she went through the main gate, paying the visitors fee at the entrance. I paid the same fee and went in after her climbing up the outer wall so I could watch her from a distance.

          She went past the keep and the Turkish mosque to the overlook, the place where you can look down and see the rest of the cit; it’s a common place for young couples to meet anonymously outside of the prying eyes of their families and neighbors. I remember it was smoggy that day; she stood on the wall with her back face towards the clouds of car exhaust hovering over the minarets and the apartment blocks. I could barely make out the pyramids from where I stood a few meters away. I lit a cigarette and waited watching her until. By then the sun was getting low. I was worried they’d close the gates and force everyone out.

              But then, sure enough, a young man in a brown jacket appeared. They greeted each other very warmly. Their bodies never touched but it was obvious they were lovers or sweethearts. They smiled at one another and the young man took a seat on the wall above her. They signed with each other for several minutes. I couldn’t understand what they were discussing but then the young man pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to the girl. She read it for about a minute and then turned the page over. Only a moment after she did that, she abruptly jumped back and let the paper fall to the ground.

             The young man jumped down and picked up the paper again. He stuffed it away inside his jacket but before it disappeared I got a glimpse of a bright red blotch on the back of the sheet; the source of the young girl’s revulsion. It was then I knew there was more to what I was seeing than a romantic rendezvous. I couldn’t make an arrest, especially when I could have been trying to detain a wanted criminal who was already renowned for his fighting prowess.

I turned around and took my police radio out of my coat to call for backup

I had hidden the radio from view and lowered my head down to the receiver when a pair of boys abruptly stopped in front of me. Their gaze drew the attention of several other people who also stopped to watch me. Worried they would expose me I hissed at them to keep walking and spoke my request into the radio. When I turned, however, the couple was gone. Infuriated, I ran to where they had been standing and tried my hardest to spy them through the crowds of people. I searched up and down and all over but was unable to spy them.

       I cursed loudly and called for my brothers in the tourism police to close the gate so no one could escape. ‘There’s a wanted terrorist inside the citadel.’ I told them. They did as I requested, after ushering out all the Western tourists and we searched every wall, tower and chamber of the citadel, we even entered the mosque and the police museum but Fatmah and her mysterious partner had escaped. I couldn’t understand how they had done it until later at dusk after one of the conscripts found a rope tied to a pillar dangling to the ground. They had climbed down the southern tower and escaped into the streets.

      I thought the day was a waste of time. I was preparing another defense for my actions, when a Lieutenant spotted something just beneath the rope. He drew me over. There was the paper with the red blotch the man had tucked away inside his jacket pinned underneath a rock with a second strip of paper on top of it.

              The first sheet was addressed to me, or rather to the man who had been trailing the pair. It read:

To Those Who Pursue Me,

Know that others have been led to my path. We grow, and as we grow you shall shrink and step aside.

The Struggler. 

                

               The writing was very slurred and uneven but each word had been spelled correctly. It was clearly a poor hand that had written the note; a poor hand but attached to an educated and intelligent mind.

               The second letter was written in very ornate and beautiful calligraphy, the Kufic style as I later found out. The writing was not only beautiful it was perfect Fusah, so perfect I had to have a sheikh at Al Azhar translate parts of it for me. I eventually found out what it said in its entirety.

In the name of God the most Merciful and Compassionate

To My Rightly Guided Brother the Struggler,

From Your Most Loyal and Loving Student the Judge,

Your actions over this last year have resonated with me. I too have seen the rampant and filthy corruption in our country and like you long for it to be a safe place for all true believers. The apostates and the hypocrites however are everywhere, not just in the jail cells and behind the desks of the men who guard them.

We are the strugglers, but we are but slaves of God who fill out his commandments without question and obedience. To fight for the people we must save them from those who are hypocrites in all matters of religion. Submission, to God’s justice requires us to judge all actions and activities not just those of the rulers. The sins of the people are also an injustice, the greatest injustice in fact for they are an affront against God. Therefore our priority is to avenge God, before considering the needs of ordinary people. Making the world safe for believers also means making them safe from their own sinful desires.

I implore you therefore, to accept me as your brother in arms and to join you in your struggle to fulfill God’s will. To show you my genuine devotion, I have attached the finger of the hand I severed from a police officer in Imbabah trying to get a bribe from a fruit vendor. This punishment is in line with the Surah, and our noble tradition of Shariah, which I’m sure you are familiar with. If you wish to contact me you may use the phone number written on the finger.

The Judge