The World - News from June 16, 1988

Muslim militants planned to blow up Cairo’s sewers and flood the city with waste water ahead of an attempt to overthrow the government, an Egyptian court was told. Members of the group obtained jobs on a $1-billion waste water project so they could obtain maps of the sewers, according to Mamdouh Gohari, chief of criminal investigations for Giza. “They planned to sabotage the sewer system . . . to create a state of havoc, deter police movements,” said Gohari, who testified at the trial of 33 defendants accused of belonging to a secret organization and charged with trying to murder two former interior ministers and a magazine editor.