Even though the final accomplice behind last month's Cairo attacks is now in custody, writes Jailan Halawi, solutions must go beyond security to better management of violence's roots On Sunday, security officials announced that Libya had extradited 18-year-old Mohamed Youssri Yassin to Egypt. Yassin was the last member of the terror cell being blamed for the 30 April downtown Cairo attacks on tourists, who was still at large. His older brother Ihab wounded seven people when he blew himself up with a nail-filled bomb in Abdel-Moneim Riyad Square on that devastating Saturday. His sister Negat was one of two fully-veiled women who later shot at a tourist bus near the Citadel, causing no casualties before shooting her accomplice (Ihab's wife Iman Khamis) then committing suicide. In Libya, Mohamed was reportedly found hiding with an Egyptian working as a hotel cook; security sources said his arrest was "aimed at finding out whether he had a role in this case." The cook who provided Mohamed with shelter was also arrested and extradited to Egypt. The cook's brother, another suspect, had been arrested earlier in Egypt. Security officials said Egypt's intelligence service informed the Libyan authorities of Mohamed's whereabouts, after discovering that he had crossed the border. Egypt and Libya have signed bilateral and pan-Arab security cooperation treaties that permit extradition of terror suspects. All of the 30 April attack suspects, security sources said, belong to the same cell that was involved in the 7 April Khan Al-Khalili bazaar bombing that claimed the lives of three tourists, as well as the bomber, Hassan Raafat Bashandi. According to security reports, police were already on the lookout for Yassin and other accomplices prior to the 30 April attacks. Other than those who died in the attacks themselves, all the suspects are now in police custody. The series of attacks on tourists were the first since 1997, when two gunmen fired automatic rifles at a tour bus parked outside the downtown Egyptian Museum, killing 10 people. The same year, militants killed 58 tourists and four Egyptians in an attack at Queen Hatshepsut's Temple in Luxor. But then last October; bombs were detonated at several locations in Sinai, including the Red Sea resort town of Taba, killing 34. At the time, authorities linked those attacks to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, since the mastermind was a Palestinian who seemed to be targeting Israeli tourists. In late March, meanwhile, a man stabbed and wounded a Hungarian couple near Al-Hussein Mosque. The perpetrator said the tourists were behaving in a manner that did not show respect for the sanctity of Prophet Mohamed's grandson. He also claimed to be taking revenge for Iraqis and Palestinians who were being murdered daily by Americans and Israelis. Although all of these attacks mainly targeted tourists -- prompting fears of repercussions on Egypt's most profitable industry -- the tourism minister said there was no indication that tourist numbers had gone down; analysts, meanwhile, noted that that would only remain the case if the attacks stopped. The fact that the most recent attacks all took place in Cairo has raised serious concerns of this being the start of a new wave of violence in the making. Despite the government's incessant assurances that the attacks were the work of an isolated, amateurish cell that was not linked to any major militant organisations, many political analysts think more attacks are inevitable, since the root causes behind the violence had not really been dealt with. "It would be unfair to blame the attacks on security shortcomings, since there is no fault proof security system," noted a political analyst who preferred anonymity. "But from the start, the militancy problem was handled unwisely, with the government placing it squarely in security's hands. Although they managed to curb the phenomenon for a while, they will never be able to find the true remedy on their own." The state, the source said, "needs to reconsider the choices it offers a whole generation of young people, so they end up being productive, rather than destructive, members of society." Overhauling the education system would be a good start, so that students don't end up being "easy prey for brainwashing". Popular Al-Ahram columnist Salama Ahmed Salama said it was terrifying that young people had reached a point where "two young women would consider death preferable to life, and for what? How could young people's desire for self-annihilation reach such a point?" Even though the attackers may not be part of a larger network, as the government has suggested, Al-Musawwar magazine Chief Editor Makram Mohamed Ahmed said ignoring the possibility that root causes need to be remedied would be a "gross miscalculation". Nabil Abdel-Fattah of Al-Ahram's Political and Strategic Studies Centre said the government had failed to contain the "political" nature of the terrorism phenomena. Controlling the major militant Islamist groups was not enough; to confront terrorism, Abdel-Fattah said, "we ought to tackle the problem's economic, social and political aspects, since Egypt has become a potential source of hundreds of cells capable of launching attacks daily." With poverty affecting both the unemployed and the employed (thanks to low wages across the board), frustration had embedded itself onto a "devastating dilemma of cultural, social, and in some cases, religious conflicts" that fill the average Egyptian's "peaceful" existence with contradictions and double standards. This frustration, Abdel- Fattah said, could "lead to the emergence of terrorists aiming to fight for what they believe to be social justice, even if they have to become outcasts to do so."
