CAIRO - The police said that they launched a big man-hunt for three unidentified male suspects in connection with the assault on a leading Islamist candidate for the presidency on the outskirts of Cairo late on Thursday. They said that Abdul Moneim Abul Futuh, a 60-year-old ex-member of the Muslim Brotherhood, was on his way home from a campaign event in the city of Menoufia when three masked armed men stopped his car on the Ring Road on the outskirts of Cairo. "The three men savagely beat him on the head with the butts of automatic rifles after assaulting the driver," a police officer close to the case told The Egyptian Gazette. He did not want to be identified by his name or rank because he was not allowed to speak to the media. The officer said that Abul Futuh, who was scheduled to register as a candidate for the presidential elections in two weeks' time, got admitted to the ICU (intensive care unit) of a Cairo hospital and was in a stable condition. A preliminary investigation, the officer said, showed that the three attackers stopped Abul Futuh's car at gun-point near Shubra el-Kheima and forced him and his driver to leave the car. "The attackers hit Abul Futuh three times on the head with rifle butts," the officer said, adding that the incident was apparently a carjacking crime. "So far, the police believe there was no political motive for the attack. It looked like car theft," he said, adding that Abul Futuh was wounded by blows to the head when he tried to defend his driver, who was also injured. "Abul Futuh suffered a concussion but was released from a Cairo hospital in the morning, though he remained under medical observation," the police officer said. In the meantime, however, Abul Futuh aides said that they suspected the incident might have been a well-planned attack on the Islamist leader to mar his election campaign. The aides, who travelled with Abul Futuh to Menoufia, said that they suspected the attack was made to look like a text-book car theft or armed robbery. "Unidentified men in Menoufia asked suspicious questions about Abul Futuh's movements and wanted to know which route he would take when returning to Cairo after the rally," they said. Abul Futuh, who was expelled by the Muslim Brotherhood, is seen as one of the more popular candidates in the presidential race, which is scheduled for the last week of June. He was expelled because he rejected the group's orders not to run in the multi-candidate election. Last week, Sheikh Yousef el-Qaradawi, one of the most widely respected Sunni Muslim clerics in the Arab world, described Abul Futuh as the "leading candidate" in a race that includes former Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa, a liberal and former foreign minister.
