Egypt: starting trial for an extremist handed over by Washington

An Egyptian judiciary source said yesterday that the supreme state security court will start on Sunday the trial of an Islamist extremist accused of taking part in the assassination of the late Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat, handed over by the US to Egypt a while back.

The US embassy in Cairo had announced that Washington handed over Nabil Ahmad Suleiman to Egypt in June 12, noting that he was living there since 1992. Suleiman's lawyer, Muntasir al-Zayyat, announced then that his client was sentenced to imprisonment in 1984 for taking part in the assassination of Sadat. A security source stressed that "Suleiman," who is a member of the al-Jihad organization, was sentenced in absentia for five years in 1982. The source added that Suleiman was sentences to imprisonment under the charge of " taking part in the planning for the assassination of Sadat."

According to the Egyptian law, every person who is sentenced in absentia because he is fleeing outside the country has the right when he comes back to Egypt to ask for retrial.

Al- Zayyat said that the American authorities held Suleiman since three years and when they found there is no evidence against him they decided to deport him to Egypt without disclosing reasons behind detaining him in the USA.

Al-Zayyat said that his client left Saudi Arabia after the assassination of Sadat and stayed in Saudi Arabia which he left in 1988 to Yemen from where he left for the USA in 1992.

Sadat, the first Arab leader who signed a peace agreement with Israel, was assassinated in 1979 on October 1981 at the hands of Islamists who considered this peace treaty as "treason." The main accused person in that operation was Khaled al-Islambuli who was sentenced to death by the military court. He was executed in 1983.