Follow-up to the EgyptAir incident --an exhaustive report on Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood:
idsa-india.org
Excerpt:
On November 13, 1995, an Egyptian diplomat working in its mission to the UN was shot dead in Geneva.45 A hitherto unknown outfit, the International Justice Group, owned responsibility for the killing.46 In less than a week, on November 19, a car bomb exploded at the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad. Sixteen people died and about 60 sustained injuries in the blast. Al Gamaa claimed responsibility for the dastardly act.47 Subsequently, al-Jihad and the International Justice Group, the latter believed to be branch of al-Gamaa, also claimed "credit" for the
operation.48
Meanwhile the terrorist campaign continued with unabated fury inside the country. The number of deaths had risen to 850 towards the end of 1995 [49] which went up close to one thousand by the middle of April 1996.50 An attack on foreign tourists on April 18, 1996, was the most tragic operation during that period. Extremists, belonging to al-Gamaa,51 opened automatic gunfire on a group of Greek tourists, killing 18 of them, including 14 elderly women. Twenty others were injured in the incident.52
The immediate fallout of the outburst of terrorist violence was that the people in the country were increasingly coming under the grip of a fear psychosis. An air of uncertainty marked the atmosphere. Since many Copts were killed and several churches and Christian-owned business establishments and shops were burnt by Islamists, religious minorities like Christian Copts were feeling concerned about their future.53 Writing about Cairo, an observer had noted: "Increasingly the mood in the sprawling Egyptian capital is of a state-of-siege."54
The continuing violence in general and attacks on foreigners55 in particular had been scaring off tourists. It had resulted in 50 per cent cuts in hotel, cruise and sightseeing bookings during 1992 [56] and Egyptair--the national airliner--faced a revenue drop of 20 per cent.57 The earning from tourism, which had so far been accounting for about $3 billion a year,58 i.e., 8 per cent of Egypt's foreign exchange earnings,59 had declined by 35 per cent.60 The 1993-94 terror wave caused the annual number of visitors to drop from 3.3 million to 2.5 million.61 The country's plans for economic reform depended heavily on a reduction in the budget deficit. Hence, there was said to be great concern bordering on panic in the government at the Muslim extremists' attacks on tourists and their threats against foreign business.62 Though the situation in the country had not reached chaotic dimensions, remarked an eyewitness, one could not ignore "the symptoms of instability that are surfacing with ever increasing frequency."63 This shows that the Muslim militants were succeeding, to some extent, in achieving their initial objective of causing political and economic destabilisation in Egypt.
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