Israel's dubious detention of six Egyptian students on charges of allegedly planning "terrorist attacks" has provoked a spate of speculation back home. Gihan Shahine investigates Visibly distressed, Abu Deif Ali tossed his head in disbelief as he talked of how his son's annual summer trip to Sinai's Arish resort with friends had suddenly ended in disaster. His son was among six students arrested in Israel on 25 August on charges of allegedly "planning a terrorist attack" in Israel in support of the Palestinian Intifada. "This is a farce," Ali snapped. "My son has never even taken part in a demonstration and has never been part of any political activity." Ali said his 23-year old son, Mustafa, was "no more frustrated by the tragic goings on in Palestine than any ordinary person. He even used to consider attempts to sneak into Israel to carry out suicide bombings as futile." Ali said Mustafa "never focussed on anything other than his studies and working in the summer to help with expenses." Mustafa's mother nodded in agreement, and said that after her son graduated this year with honours in computer science, he put his curriculum vitae together in order to start applying for jobs when he [would have come back] from his week-long vacation in Arish. "But my son never came back," the mother cried. Mustafa left Cairo on 19 August with five of his friends. They headed for Arish, where the group had been spending their summer vacations for the past three years. The six friends were originally neighbours and had been together at school. Ali said Mustafa called two days before his weeklong vacation was supposed to end, to tell his parents that he was fine and would be coming back soon. "My son sounded just normal, and there was nothing extraordinary about the call," Ali told Al-Ahram Weekly. But when Mustafa and his friends did not come back on 24 August as planned, the parents started to worry. First, they called the landlord of the place where Mustafa and his friends had stayed in Arish the past few years. Abdallah Hassan told them the young men left when they found out the place had already been rented out to other vacationers. It remains unclear, at this writing, where the students stayed, and whether or not they actually spent a "nice time" lounging on the beach, as they had been telling their parents over the phone. "We immediately rushed to El-Arish, where we told the authorities that our children were missing," Ali recounted. But the authorities there had no idea where the young men were. Ten days later, the parents received the shock of their lives when they found out from the local press that their children were actually detained in Israel. According to Israeli press reports, the six Egyptian students were indicted at Beer Sheba District court on charges of allegedly infiltrating into Israel, conspiring to seize a tank, and rob a bank in Mitzpe Ramon. The suspects allegedly planned to use the money from the bank to fund additional attacks on Israel in support of the Palestinian Intifada once they returned to Egypt. Israeli press reports said the charge sheet also included planning to kidnap Israeli soldiers in order to negotiate the release of Palestinian security prisoners. Israel also alleges that the suspects had been planning the attack for three years as part of an independent local organisation, and had not associated themselves with any of the leading "terrorist" (in the words of the Israeli press) groups. Haaretz newspaper said the students met each other while they were studying in Cairo. Their group, it said, was initially larger, until some members dropped out. The charges brought against the suspects include "conspiring to commit a crime, infiltration and entering the country illegally", the Israeli newspaper report said. According to the Israeli scenario, the students were arrested on 25 August while they were attempting to cross the Egyptian border near Nitzana in the south. Israeli press reports said the students managed to get three kilometres into the country before being spotted and captured by border policemen. The suspects were reportedly carrying 14 knives, black camouflage attire, backpacks, binoculars, communications equipment, maps of Israel and various other items "to help carry out their scheme", the Israeli press said. According to Israelinsider, an online news magazine, it took the Israeli border police "six hours to chase the Egyptian infiltrators", who were originally thought to be "members of the Egyptian intelligence services who had been collecting information about IDF security procedures along the Israeli- Egyptian border". Border police commander Roni Ohana told Israelinsider that, "from the moment we identified that a cell had crossed into Israel from Sinai, we launched a manhunt after them that lasted about six hours until early morning. "The moment the Egyptians were discovered with detailed maps of Israel," Ohana continued, he "knew that they were not ordinary infiltrators, trying to smuggle tobacco into Israel or find jobs." Ohana added that the students actually confessed that, "it was their intention to harm us or any Israeli security force that they came across, and after that civilians." According to Ohana's scenario, "the group planned to kidnap Israeli soldiers and bring them back to Egypt where they would be held in exchange for the release of Palestinian security prisoners." Until the Weekly went to print, Egypt's Foreign Ministry had yet to receive the charge sheet from Israeli authorities; the ministry's consular section in Tel Aviv, however, submitted its own report based on personal interviews with the students, who, the report said, confessed that they infiltrated Israel "to declare their support for the Palestinian Intifada". According to the report, the students said they headed to the Egyptian town of Rafah, and then walked for four days, until they managed to find a place where they could cross the border security fence. The report said the students only had table knives and food supplies in their possession. Egyptian Assistant Minister for Consular Affairs Essam Megahed said the ministry was conducting talks with the Israeli side. He expressed hope the students would be ultimately released since they had no intention to actually attack, but were merely driven by enthusiasm to commit such a spontaneous act. The students' alleged confession has served to dampen initial conspiracy theories suggesting that the detainees were "abducted, or baited, by the Israeli forces to attain specific political targets". Speculation persisted, however, that the charges have been exaggerated "to ensure Israel gets as much as it can out of the incident". The biggest questions remained: how did the six students manage to get three kilometres into Israel, via a heavily secured zone; and why did it take the Israeli border police six hours to seize unarmed young men with nothing more than knives in their possession? "Our children do not even know how to drive cars, they don't know how to handle a weapon and none of them has received any military training or done his military service yet," argued Youssri Hussein, the father of 24-year-old Mohamed, a second year student at Helwan's Faculty of Engineering. "It is ridiculous to think that with the help of a knife someone can seize a tank, rob a bank, and take Israeli soldiers as hostages. They must think we are mentally retarded to believe that farce." But that "logic problem" is not the only reason why many people have speculated that the story is more political than anything else. The gap between the 25 August arrest and its announcement in newspapers on 12 September has boosted suspicions that Israel was using the incident at this particular time to "undermine", or at least "blur", the current Egyptian efforts to settle the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Mohamed Zarie, director of the Egyptian Human Rights Association for the Assistance of Prisoners (HRAAP), said he was not sure whether "the students were actually under any pressure to confess that they had penetrated into Israeli territory." But, even if they actually did, Zarie said, doing so would "only be a normal reaction to the atrocities committed by Israel against the Palestinian people daily, and does not mean the students planned to seize a tank or rob a bank". "The charges remain bizarre," Zarie said. His wondered whether the charges had been "largely fabricated to bargain for the release of Azzam Azzam", the Israeli of Druze origin who was convicted in Egypt several years ago of spying for Israel, "or of the three Israelis who were reportedly arrested on the borders on charges of drug trafficking". Amir Makhoul, of Ittijah, a network of Arab community- based organisations in Israel , also suspected hidden Israeli intentions "to slam tourism in Egypt and prove allegations that Egyptians are providing Palestinians with support through secret tunnels, and not properly securing their borders". Makhoul referred to the fact that the Israeli prime minister's counter-terrorism bureau recently issued a warning to Israeli travellers not to visit the Sinai peninsula due to "concrete information" about possible terror attacks directed at tourists there. Again, a few days after the arrest, the local Israeli press had a field day reporting on how Egypt does not customarily hinder armed Palestinian infiltration into the Gaza strip whether through border or tunnel, and that Israeli security sources "suspect Cairo is angling for recovery of six Egyptian students picked up in southern Israel last week before they admit over world TV they were on an Egyptian training exercise and Egyptian border officers let them through", according to the Israeli website, debka.com Hafez Abu Se'da, secretary-general of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR), said that "regardless of whether those speculations are right or wrong, the bottom line is that infiltration is not [the kind of crime that has been described by the Israelis], especially that those students were driven by national sentiments into a spontaneous act, and they were neither trained, armed, or part of any organisation or plan." For Zarie, the students' spontaneous act is especially understandable, "in light of the Arab governments' apathy towards what happens in Palestine". Abu Se'da said the students' profiles and academic achievements indicated that they were not part of any organisation or planned attack. The students are aged between 21 and 25, and hail from the lower middle class. Mohamed Youssri Hussein is an engineering student at Helwan University; Mohamed Maher Said is a student in an industrial school; Mostafa Mahmoud Youssef is an engineering student at Cairo University; Emad El-Sayed Tohami holds an industrial diploma, Mohamed Gamal Ezzat is a student at the Matariya Technical Institute, and Mustafa Abu Deif Ali holds a degree in computer science. The students, who for the most part got good grades at school, usually worked as electricians and painters during their summer vacations to help with their educational expenses. None of them has been engaged in political activity or been affiliated with a religious group. Interestingly, Mahmoud Gamal got engaged only two weeks before travelling to Arish. Abu Se'da said he has been working with human rights organisations in Palestine to provide the students with legal assistance and create public pressure on the Israeli government to release them. Makhoul said that, initially, the Israeli authorities did not allow him access to the students "on the pretext that we didn't have power of attorney or accurate information about the students' names". Abu Se'da, however, has been collecting all the legal documents that would allow Makhoul to access the detainees. "We need to move urgently to access the students during the interrogations and before they are subjected to any possible kind of physical or psychological pressure," Makhoul told the Weekly. "They have to know that they are not alone." On Tuesday, Mustafa's parents received a letter from their son (via the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs) indicating that he was fine. He also urged them not to believe "anything they had read about the case in the papers."
