What could prompt a bus driver to open fire on his passengers, asks Mohamed Abdel-Baky No one would have given Mahmoud Sweilam a second glance until Tuesday, the day the driver, employed by Arab Contractors, opened fire on his colleagues, killing six and injuring the same number. There were 22 employees on the company bus that Sweilam, 54, was driving. He collected them from their homes, as he did each working day, then pulled up 300 metres from the company's premises in 6 October governorate, where he showered his passengers with bullets from an automatic rifle. A statement released after the attack by the Arab Contractors, one of the Egypt's largest construction companies, said Sweilam had hidden the weapon under the bus seat before driving to the company's premises with the victims aboard. After the shootings he chatted with the company's security personnel until they noticed blood dripping from the door of the bus. Survivors of the attack say Sweilam looked calm, smiling as he had each day of the 25 years since he first joined the company. The motive for the killings remains a mystery, though preliminary security reports say Sweilam had been involved in smuggling antiquities with other employees on the bus and they had refused to give him his share of money. "The driver first aimed the gun at Abdel-Fattah Salem, who pleaded with him not to kill him but he opened fire and shot him dead," a security source told reporters. The driver then panicked at the sight of the blood and began firing indiscriminately at his colleagues. Company officials say Sweilam had had an excellent record and enjoyed a good reputation with his co-workers. The prosecutor-general has ordered Sweilam to be detained in custody for four days pending investigations. Experts who talked to Al-Ahram Weekly say the incident is symptomatic of a society increasingly prone to violence. "Violence is now a common theme in our lives. It is like a bomb ready to explode at any moment," says Ali Abu Leila, a sociologist at Ain Shams University. With more than 40 per cent of the Egyptians living under the poverty line and an all but atrophied political system growing numbers of people are expressing their frustration in the form of violence. "When you read the crime sections in Egyptian papers you sometimes get the feeling that society is moving towards collective suicide."
