CAIRO - The trade in smuggled firearms has soared in major Egyptian cities since late January this year, which has been the traders' busiest year ever, ordinary citizens complained. The unrest and violence that erupted after the January 25 Revolution has sent demand for weapons soaring, doubling prices for handguns, rifles and other weapons and helping to supply the increasingly well-armed thugs challenging the police, Ahmed Amin, a Cairo-based lawyer, said. In the first six months of the year, prices for firearms have risen 75 per cent to as much as $2,000 a weapon. "This price increase reflects the surge in demand for arms. The biggest jump was in the price of a smuggled pistol, which now costs LE2,000 compared with LE1,000 before, when demand was minimal," Amin told The Gazette. He said that smugglers buy weapons from Libyans and Sudanese and sell them to traders, who in turn pass them on to merchants in the coastal city of Alexandria, or Upper Egyptian governorates such as Sohag, Minya, Assuit and Beni Sueif. "There is an unknown network between Egyptian smugglers and Libyan and Sudanese gangs dealing with the purchase and sale of weapons of various kinds, especially rifles and hand guns," he added. The emergence of unrest and lack of security has led some Government officials to revive accusations of foreign arms trafficking. Two days ago, the police thwarted many attempts to smuggle in weapons from the Sudan, Libya and Israel. Shortly after protests broke out in January, authorities called on these three countries to cut the flow of guns. But security officials say that weapons coming across the Western Desert are also supplied by Libyan army deserters, who bring their weapons with them when they desert, and from raids on army depots on the outskirts of major cities in the North African country. Many buyers in Alexandria, some 220 kilometres north of Cairo, said that most weapons are brought across from the Western Desert, where the remote, undemarcated frontier between Egypt and Libya has for decades been a haven for smugglers ferrying cheap goods and weapons from Libya. They added that there has also been an increasing flow of guns into Egypt from the Sudan, Gaza and Israel.
