As investigations into Sunday's bomb blast in front of Al-Hussein Mosque continue conspiracy theories abound. Shaden Shehab examines the most prevalent There is a small crater and a vast number of security personnel. Otherwise the district of Al-Hussein is busy getting life back to normal after Sunday's bomb blast that killed a French tourist and injured 24 others of different nationalities. Bazaar and café owners seem intent on acting as if nothing happened, no doubt hoping that tourists will do the same. Although they have not deserted the historic market, tourist numbers have dropped. At a time when tourism was already feeling the pinch of the financial crisis it is hardly surprising that the relevant authorities are trying hard to convey the same message, that the explosion was an isolated, one-off incident. "An arbitrary, minor event." Worse incidents "happen everywhere in the world". That is what on- message officials are keen to convey. State security prosecutors are still investigating the explosion. Three suspects have been arrested, far more people interrogated, but any outcome of ongoing investigations has yet to be made public for fear of compromising the enquiry. What has been revealed is that the home-made bomb weighed up to 1.5 kilos and contained metal, stones and gunpowder. A washing-machine timer was used to detonate the device which was placed under a marble bench near a café outside Al-Hussein Hotel, contradicting eye-witnesses reports claiming the bomb had been thrown from a rooftop. A second device was found but was defused by bomb disposal experts. As will happen in Egypt, a host of theories as to who was behind the attack began circulating as soon as news of the explosion spread. Was the attacker a loner or was there a terrorist organisation behind him? Was the timing random or planned? What was the operation intended to signify or target? Security sources say the most likely scenario is that the bomb was the work of a handful of individuals and not the doing of some terrorist organisation. Islamist groups mostly condemned the incident while the Muslim Brotherhood pointed an accusing finger at Al-Qaeda. Diaa Rashwan, an expert at Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, sees obvious parallels between Sunday's blast and the 2005 explosion in Al-Azhar, just a stone's throw away. "The same place, the same primitive explosive device. It looks like imitation. Sunday's bombers are either directly linked with those responsible for the 2005 blast or else they have embraced the same trend. I assume they are Salafi jihadi followers acting on their own, under the influence of an ideology people around the globe have used to justify their attacks. In Egypt they set out to target tourists whom they see as representatives of corruption and Zionism." The 2005 bombing was the work of an 18-year-old engineering student, Hassan Raafat Bashandi. Three tourists, together with the bomber, were killed in the attack. Bashandi neither belonged to, nor had links with, any terrorist organisation. Press Syndicate Chairman Makram Mohamed Ahmed agrees the bomb was probably the work of "untrained individuals who do not belong to any larger group but are taking things in their own hands, following Islamist militant ideas and searching on the Internet for the necessary technical details on how to build a bomb." There were other, more conspiracy-oriented theories. "It was carried by someone brainwashed by people either inside Egypt or by foreign bodies," said Major- General Farouk Taha, head of the People's Assembly Defence and National Security Committee. "Egypt is targeted by both internal and external forces. The aim of this operation was to induce terror and shake stability but this did not and will not happen." Egypt's "leading regional role", says Taha, is antagonising other powers in the region while locally there are "internal forces" seeking to destabilise Egypt in pursuit of their own agendas. Those arguing that the attack was coordinated by some hitherto unknown local group insist it is no coincidence that the explosion should follow on the heels of several conciliatory moves made by the state, including the withdrawal of the Egyptian delegation from Tel Aviv following Israeli backtracking on a ceasefire in Gaza, the release of Ghad Party leader Ayman Nour, news that a number of political prisoners will also be released and rumours, officially denied, that emergency law is soon to end. As with most conspiracy theories the same facts are marshalled to support an opposite view, in this case that it is the state that benefits most from the incident since it will be able to use it to extend emergency rule in the face of putative pressure from the new administration in Washington to introduce anti- terrorism legislation to replace the decades long state of emergency. Any such suggestion has been roundly denied by Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit. "This incident might be taken as a pretext for delaying any anti-terror law and extending the emergency law," says leading columnist Salama Ahmed Salama. "Doing so will not prevent such outrages. It merely alters the conditions necessary to combat terrorism." Many observers argue that the immediate spur to the explosion is anger at what some in the Arab world view as Egypt's failure to help the Palestinians during Israel's invasion of Gaza. Khalil El-Anani, of Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, firmly believes Sunday's attackers were individual militants provoked by the recent Israeli onslaught. Fouad Allam, former head of the state security service, while agreeing that events in Gaza might have provided the impetus, went so far as to argue that the attack could herald "a new wave of terrorism" with a "much bigger impact". Egypt fought a long battle against extremists in the 1990s. Terrorist acts peaked in 1997, with the murder of more than 50 tourists in Luxor. Since then terrorism has been largely defeated and there have been few attacks in the Nile valley. Between 2004 and 2006, however, a string of bombings in the Sinai Peninsula killed 120 people. (see p.3)
