After Latest Blasts, Egyptian Town Again Under Suspicion

Hours after tightly coordinated bombings rocked the Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheik this weekend, security agents were moving through the sandy slums on the outskirts of this Sinai town.

Dozens of Arish residents have been arrested and questioned about Saturday’s predawn blasts, which killed at least 64 people and injured more than 100.

Few were surprised by the arrival of investigators in this quiet Mediterranean coastal town. The inquiry into Saturday’s carnage was bound to reach impoverished, sun-bleached Arish, more than 200 miles north of Sharm el Sheik. From the earliest phase of the investigation, Egyptian officials said the bombings were probably linked to a similar string of explosions in October that killed 34 people in the resort of Taba, at the top of the Gulf of Aqaba. The government has blamed the Taba blasts on an alleged terrorist network based in Arish. Some of the suspects are still at large.

Security agents “asked the men to help them find the escapees because otherwise everybody would be in trouble,” said 50-year-old homemaker Naima Mohammed. She was picked up Saturday morning and, like other family members of fugitives, was ordered to give blood samples to match against DNA salvaged from the bombing wreckage. Her 23-year-old son, suspected by the government of involvement in the October attacks, has been missing since the fall.

People in Arish are painfully aware of what it means to be “in trouble.” After the Taba attacks, the town emerged as the epicenter of the investigation, and a human rights embarrassment for the government.

Although only nine suspects were named, thousands of people in the north Sinai peninsula area that includes Arish were arrested, tortured and held incommunicado, human rights groups say. The memory of those arrests, many of which occurred during the holy month of Ramadan, remains fresh.

“It was the blackest Ramadan we ever had,” said Sonia el Qashef, a homemaker. “They took all the men. There weren’t any men left.”

The common traits of the two Sinai attacks are plain. In both strikes, bombers drove vehicles heavily laden with explosives into hotel lobbies, delivering potentially crippling blows to Egypt’s $6-billion-a-year tourism industry.

Both erupted around national holidays. Taba was attacked after the commemoration of Egypt’s military successes against Israel in 1973; Saturday’s blasts fell on the anniversary of the 1952 revolution against the Egyptian monarchy.

One of the shadowy groups vying to take responsibility for the Sharm el Sheik attacks also claimed to be behind the Taba strikes.

By Monday, the Sinai security chiefs had reportedly been fired, and the hunt for clues was in full swing. Egyptian forces set up a tight network of checkpoints on roads, outside airports and near tourist sites. Bedouins who live in the desert near Red Sea resorts were rounded up, and shooting erupted between police and Bedouin tribesmen in the hills north of Sharm el Sheik.

Police also said they were searching for a group of Pakistani men who entered the country but appeared to be missing, although they emphasized that there was no known link between the men and the weekend attacks.

An Egyptian official who spoke on condition of anonymity downplayed the search for the Pakistanis. The government still believes the latest bombings were linked to the Taba attacks, he said, and is hunting for suspects on the Sinai peninsula.

“Nothing indicates there was a connection to the bombing so far,” the official said, referring to the hunt for the Pakistanis. “The feeling is there won’t be” one.

Amid the rush to investigate, Arish stands out as a cautionary tale for the authorities. Despite mass arrests and widespread reports of torture of those detained, security agents failed to capture many of the suspects they were seeking. Most of those held have been released. If anything, residents say the crackdown radicalized public sentiment even further against the government.

Set at the northern edge of the peninsula, Arish is in many respects the polar opposite of the trendier Sharm el Sheik. Arish is a haven for working-class summer vacationers who pour into town from Cairo, starved for sea air. It’s extremely rare to see women out of their ankle-length robes and head scarves, even when swimming. Garbage disposal seems to elude the city, so the smell of overheating trash hangs in the salty air, and flies hum thick in the streets.

The town has been through tough times since the Taba bombings, but the mood had begun to settle down again -- until this weekend. “The people were suffocating before” the attacks in Sharm el Sheik, said Ashraf Ayoub, a local Labor Party leader. “Now they’re panicking.”

Widow Farhana Salman, 55, endured 11 days in jail in November. She wasn’t charged with a crime, but her son was being sought by authorities in connection with Taba. Most of the family was rounded up, threatened and questioned, she said. Her son is still missing.

Salman was arrested during Ramadan, when Muslims fast during daylight hours. The interrogations went on all night. She was kept awake by the screams of men being tortured, she said. When she first came home, she could still hear the cries when she lay in bed. Even the crowing of the roosters sounded like the tormented men.

“Before I was detained, I thought if I found him I might turn him over to state security,” Salman said. “But after hearing those screams, I knew I could never turn him in.”

Her son is a 27-year-old tomato farmer who was making plans for the future, she said.

“They arrested the whole neighborhood. They took the young people and tortured them,” Salman said. “Now I hate the government.”