Who done it -- this time?

By Jailan Halawi
The gang of five who carried out the bank robbery on 21 November in Al-Maragha, Sohag, in which 10 people were killed and 11 were injured, escaped with LE600,000. The last such robbery took place in 1994, when assailants got away with LE500,000 from the Agricultural Development Bank in Ayyat, Giza.
On the previous occasion, Egypt's largest militant group, Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiya, claimed responsibility. Although no group has yet done so for the latest crime, the similarities between last month's robbery and that carried out in 1994 -- including the use of automatic weapons and an exchange of gunfire with police -- has led some analysts to speculate that Islamist militants might have carried out the latest attack too.
The Al-Gama'a robbed a number of banks and jewellery shops in southern Egypt between 1992 and 1997. However, the region has been largely peaceful since a 1998 crackdown that followed a massacre of 58 tourists and four Egyptians in Luxor the previous year.
Interior Minister Habib El-Adli has been quoted as saying that it is ''premature" to conclude that the robbery marks the beginning of a possibly new wave of terrorist attacks. Investigators, though, have yet to rule out the possibility that the robbery was the work of Islamist extremists. "Given that the investigation is continuing, I can't speculate on whether it was an ordinary robbery or one carried out by extremists," El-Adli said.
According to El-Adli, security measures were lax at the scene of the robbery. As a consequence, Sohag's security chief was replaced and brought to the ministry in Cairo.
An Al-Gama'a military commander, Alaa Abdel-Razeq Attiya, was killed by security forces on 18 October, triggering threats of revenge from an expatriate leader, Rifai Ahmed Taha. However, Montasser El-Zayyat, a lawyer for the Gama'a and their de facto spokesman, denied that the robbery was the work of the group. El-Zayyat said that he had received a message from the group's expatriate leaders confirming that they remain committed to a unilateral cease-fire first declared in 1997 and put into effect the following year.
At a meeting with security chiefs a few days before the attack, El-Adli ordered his men to tighten security around possible targets, especially banks and jewellery shops. This followed a police warning that an unnamed group planned to carry out an armed attack to obtain money to finance their criminal activities.
Despite this, many security men who should have been standing guard outside the bank were not at their posts at the time of the raid.
Related stories:
Strenuous hunt for bank robbers 30 Nov. - 6 Dec. 2000
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