Radical Tied to Egyptian’s Slaying Got U.S. Visa : Assassination: Officials think he went to New York to raise money. About 15 Muslim extremists with outside financing are believed responsible for killing Egypt’s Speaker.

A blind sheik who heads the radical Islamic organization believed responsible for the assassination last month of the Speaker of Egypt’s Parliament was mistakenly granted a visa to travel to New York in an apparent attempt to raise money from American Muslim groups shortly before the killing, according to Egyptian security sources.

Authorities also are investigating reports that Omar Abdel Rahman, the sheik and spiritual leader of Gamaat al Islamia, was in Baghdad, Iraq, on the day of the shooting, which killed Rifaat Mahgoub and five others in his motorcade.

Nearly 300 Islamic fundamentalists have been arrested in a bloody series of confrontations between Islamic groups and police in the weeks since the Oct. 13 assassination. Now, Egyptian authorities believe that about 15 Muslim extremists with substantial financing and training from outside Egypt were responsible for the attack, according to security and diplomatic sources.

Although no clear connections have been established, investigators are looking at an international network of contacts between radical Islamic groups seeking to overthrow the Egyptian government and possible benefactors in the United States, Europe, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Sudan and among some elements of the Afghan rebel moujahedeen , the sources said.

Gamaat al Islamia, an outgrowth of the organization of fundamentalists who assassinated former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, is believed responsible for a recent wave of sectarian violence in connection with the group’s attempt to forcefully establish an Islamic state in Egypt, an officially Muslim country that remains one of the most secular in the Middle East.

The organization is active primarily in the rural villages and townships of Upper Egypt and in the vast slums of Cairo. Its followers are mostly poor, young workers and university students, disillusioned with what they see as the failure of the government of President Hosni Mubarak to prohibit alcohol and public entertainments and to adopt a strict form of Islamic justice.

However, Egyptian security sources said the recent arrests have made it clear that Gamaat al Islamia has received substantial financing, most likely from outside the country. A total of $500,000 was seized in connection with the arrests, and authorities found an additional 60,000 Egyptian pounds ($2,220) at an apartment near the Pyramids rented by one member of the organization.

Interior Ministry officials said there is no evidence directly linking Abdel Rahman, who was charged but acquitted in the Sadat assassination, with Mahgoub’s death. However, authorities say they believe he acted as a link between members of his organization inside Egypt and supporters outside the country.

Investigators now are trying to trace Abdel Rahman’s activities since he left Egypt last May, after the dropping of charges against him stemming from a violent confrontation involving members of Gamaat al Islamia in the village of Fayoum, west of Cairo.

According to security and diplomatic sources, Abdel Rahman went first to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, for a pilgrimage, then to Khartoum, Sudan, and on to Pakistan, where he met with representatives of the Afghan moujahedeen , some elements of which authorities believe have provided guerrilla training to Egyptian fundamentalists.

In Khartoum, the sources said, the U.S. Embassy failed to make a thorough check on Abdel Rahman and issued him a U.S. visa, which allowed him to travel to New York this fall. A more careful check would have revealed that Abdel Rahman could be issued a visa only with special permission of the State Department, the sources said.

After his arrival in New York, authorities believe he met with representatives of radical Muslim groups in an attempt to garner financing, but they have been unable to pinpoint his activities because the FBI refused requests to keep Abdel Rahman under surveillance, sources in Cairo said.

Abdel Rahman, 52, first became well-known in Egypt for declaring just after the death of former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser that Nasser was an infidel whose body should not be prayed over. Later, he declared that Sadat was “a ruler astray from God’s message, and an infidel who should be uprooted.”

He spent most of the early part of this year under unofficial house arrest in Fayoum, but since the dismissal of criminal charges against him, he has not returned to Egypt.

“The question is, is Omar Abdul Rahman a new Khomeini, living in voluntary exile in the U.S. and leading the Egyptian revolution by way of sending cassette tapes and gathering contributions? There are unconfirmed indications that this is the case,” said a leading Egyptian magazine, Rose al Youssef.

Authorities are still trying to confirm reports that Abdel Rahman was in Baghdad on the day of the assassination. Security officials tend to discount the idea, proposed in some Egyptian press reports, that the spiritual leader met with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

“We’re not sure he met with Saddam Hussein. It’s not easy to meet him; probably, it was people close to him,” one security official said. However, authorities have largely ruled out any direct Iraqi connection with the Mahgoub assassination, although they said Iraq may have provided some indirect financial assistance, perhaps through a Palestinian group.

Meanwhile, purported confessions from some of the arrested suspects reveal that the original target of the assassination was not Mahgoub, Egypt’s second-most-powerful politician, but Interior Minister Mohammed Abdel-Halim Moussa.

Moussa was traveling in a nearly identical black Mercedes in the motorcade, and the suspects reportedly told police they decided to shoot Mahgoub after they realized they had missed Moussa. Egyptian fundamentalists have had a running battle with Egypt’s Interior Ministry after several years of crackdowns that led to the attempted assassination late last year of Moussa’s unpopular predecessor, Zaki Badr.

Papers analyzing why the Badr assassination attempt failed were found in the same apartment where the 60,000 Egyptian pounds were found, according to security sources. A gun of the same kind used in the Mahgoub shooting was found in an apartment in Cairo’s teeming Imbaba district, and ballistics tests are under way to determine whether it was the gun used in the assassination.

Authorities also seized a variety of explosives, many apparently fashioned from material found in old mine fields from the 1973 war with Israel.

Officials believe the attempt to assassinate Moussa may have been touched off by the death in September of a spokesman for Gamaat al Islamia, Alaa Mouhieddin, who was gunned down by unknown assailants in Giza. The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights said it believes there is evidence that Egyptian security officials were responsible for the shooting, but Western diplomats said that even if police did carry out the killing, it is unlikely that Moussa knew about it.

Altogether, Egyptian security officials believe a group of about seven Gamaat al Islamia members participated in the Mahgoub shooting, aided by about eight others who helped plan it and arrange for weapons. All are Egyptians, and all but four are in custody, after a series of shoot-outs between police and Islamic extremists that have left at least seven people dead.

Abdel Rahman, now believed to be somewhere in the Middle East, is not facing any charges in Egypt and is not being sought for arrest. Still, said one security official, “We consider that he is dangerous--very dangerous--because he believes in very dangerous ideas, and he can make others believe his thoughts.”