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07/18/2005:

"Egyptian officials urge caution over arrested biochemist"

Egypt's interior minister, Habib al-Adli, has criticised the British police for coming to "hasty conclusions" about an Egyptian biochemist who was living in Leeds and who returned to Cairo several days before the London attacks.
The pro-government daily, Al Jumhuriya, said the minister had told it that reports of the scientists's links to al-Qaida were groundless.

The prosecutor general, Maher Abdel Wahid, has also come out with a pointed reminder that Egypt and the UK have no extradition treaty, so that even if the chemist were charged in Britain, Cairo need not send him back.

Egyptian police arrested Magdi el-Nashar, 33, last Thursday after British officials gave his name to the Egyptian authorities a few days earlier. Investigators found explosives in a house in Alexandra Grove, Leeds, to which Dr Nashar was reported to have links.

Muhammad Muhammad, the imam of the Tawhid mosque in Cairo, told the Guardian yesterday: "Police attended prayers on Thursday. They stood beside him and at the end just linked their arms to his and walked him out to a waiting car. That's the way it's done here."

The arrest has caused shock and consternation in the lower middle-class neighbourhood of Cairo where his family lives. Residents say Dr Nashar was known as a quiet, polite scientist who did his family proud by his educational achievements.

Although he attended the mosque regularly, he was not known as a fundamentalist, and he retained close links to a Christian family in the dusty street where he grew up.

Egyptian human rights advocates have taken up the case, urging access to him by independent lawyers. Montasser El Zayat, a senior member of the Bar Association, said: "We are against the bombings; at the same time we want honesty and fairness."
Full: guardian.co.uk

How many people have been detained since the 7th, being tortured into 'confessions'?