CAIRO: Mohamed Ibrahim Makkawi, yesterday arrested at Cairo airport, is not the same person as Saif al-Adel, according to today's statements from the Egyptian government. However, the Egyptian Interior Ministry has confirmed that Makkawi was still a wanted man and will face charges of terrorism and conspiracy to over-throw the government. Makkawi will remain in custody and eventually appear before the Higher State Security Court to answer for these charges, the ministry said. Questions are aflutter as to how the mistaken identity happened The two men share a similar background. Both were Egyptian military officers who joined the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Makkawi held the rank of major and had had extensive explosives training in Egypt's Special Forces. To place this in context, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat had been assassinated in the early 80s by Islamic extremists within his own army, and too, while reviewing his troops. Makkawi was tried in 1987 for his Islamist affiliations and was later dismissed from the army. He and al-Adel, who was then a lieutenant, left for Pakistan to enlist in Osama bin Laden's jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Abdel Rahman, the son of the blind sheikh with the same name, who is currently incarcerated in the United States for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, has spoken to news sources in Cairo about the two men. “I last saw Makkawi in 1989 when we fought together,” Rahman said, “I also knew al-Adel well and fought alongside him during our jihad.” However, shortly after he joined al-Qaeda, Makkawi fell out with bin Laden and the Egyptian physician Ayman al Zawahiri, who is now al Qaeda's leader. Unwelcome in Egypt, Makkkawi, vehemently fought to clear the developing confusion between himself and al-Adel. Makkawi told the told the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, in an interview published in May 2011, that he disagreed with al-Qaeda and sought political asylum in Pakistan. Makkawi said his children had been expelled from school and friends, neighbors and relatives had become informants for intelligence agencies. “After the agencies lost hope to force me to accept fake al Qaeda No. 3 role and the big 9/11 lie, they attempted to kill me and my two elder sons by despicable means,” Makkawi claimed in a letter appealing to the UNHCR, adding that at one point there had been an attempt to poison him. He also claims he had appealed to President George W. Bush and also asked the FBI to detain him. He said he had been wrongly identified as Saif al-Adel, and that his name had been used as an alias; he also said he had severed any links to al-Qaeda in 1989, shortly after the organization was set up and several years before it declared its war against the West. “I did not carry out any operation against any installation or individual,” said Makkawi, a former army officer in Egypt's special forces. He said he knew bin Laden and Zawahiri, but not extensively. Inexplicably, after being denied travel papers for over a decade, Makkawi was apparently able to obtain travel documents from the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad. He then flew to Cairo Wednesday, in an effort to clear his name. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/2L8Lb Tags: al Adel, featured, still at large Section: Egypt, Latest News
