Although more than 20 years have passed since Abdulkarim Nadi disappeared from his village after being accused, along with two other suspects, of trying to assassinate former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, in 1995, his mother still awaits his return. She looks out the window of her modest house whenever she hears a whispering voice in the streets of her village of Nag Dungul in the Armant District, 20 kilometers southwest of Luxor.
Although more than 20 years have passed since Abdulkarim Nadi disappeared from his village after being accused, along with two other suspects, of trying to assassinate former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, in 1995, his mother still awaits his return. She looks out the window of her modest house whenever she hears a whispering voice in the streets of her village of Nag Dungul in the Armant District, 20 kilometers southwest of Luxor.
“My son traveled to Saudi Arabia in 1990, immediately after finishing military service, in search of work. But a long time passed without hearing from him until we heard through newspapers about his involvement in the assassination attempt on Mubarak. Now, we only know that he is still incarcerated in an Ethiopian prison for a life sentence.”
Before he left, however, Abdulkarim’s mother recalls that he had developed a strong and intimate relationship with two leading members of Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya (a Sunni Islamist group considered a terrorist organization in the West); namely, Mohammed Dandrawi and Rifai Ahmed Taha, former head of the group’s Shura Council.
“They both used to visit Abdulkarim at home and managed to instill their radical thoughts into his mind, taking advantage of his religious background and love of Islam,” according to Abdulkarim’s mother. “They said he was a faithful Muslim who would revive the concept of Jihad, contribute to the ‘establishment of an Islamic state’ and restore the ‘glory of Islam.’”
Poverty and extremism
In that exceptionally poor milieu, a number of Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya leaders lived in Nag Dungul, spreading their extremist ideologies amongst the village’s young men known for their pious nature. In fact, most of Nag Dungul’s inhabitants belonged to the Sufi order, renowned for its tolerance and rejection of violence, yet many of those young men were later implicated in several terrorist acts in Egypt and beyond.
Despite the famous renunciation and regret expressed by the leaderships of these radical Islamist groups for the atrocities with which they were associated, certain leaders still feel proud about that past era. One of the group’s leaders even said, during a preaching session at Al-Rahman Mosque in downtown Armant, about two kilometers from Nag Dungul, “I wish the Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya did not sheath its sword.”
Incarceration worth it
Thirty-something Ahmad Fuad, an Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya member in Nag Dungul, spent about 11 years in prison. He was 19 years old when he was first incarcerated, and was released in 2005. Later, he got a job as a teacher of Koran at one of Al-Azhar’s institutes in Armant. He still defends the group, justifying its belligerency in the 1980s and 1990s as a natural product of state violence against it.
Fuad, along with several friends, was keen to attend the group’s weekly meeting held each Wednesday at Al-Rahman Mosque. That meeting played a significant role in promoting the group’s ideologies among the ranks of young men, until it was raided by the police in 1994, resulting in the arrest of all the attendants, totaling 70 men. However, since the outbreak of the January 25th revolution, these meetings have been restored and preaching is now relayed through loudspeakers for listeners outside the mosque.
An entire village pays the price
Abdulkarim’s mother holds the two leading figures, Dandrawi and Taha, responsible for the destruction of her son’s life and other young men in the village by spreading misconceptions among them. “They have destroyed the future of my son and his peers. Now, after the revolution, many have been enjoying the blessings of life, and live happily amongst their spouses and children, while my son and his peers are paying the price,” she said.
The entire population of Nag Dungul—about 5,500 – has borne the brunt of these radical thoughts, according to some villagers. Since Mubarak’s assassination attempt, government services are non-existent. There is only one dilapidated primary school, no hospital, health unit, paved roads or a sewerage system.
Many still fear the return of the group’s members to their past violence and radical behavior amid the present mayhem overwhelming the country, especially since the group’s actions have taken on a confidential nature. However, the group’s leaders have dismissed such fears, saying that their current anti-violence stance regrets the past years of assassinations and sabotage.
Abdulkarim’s mother is thinking of appealing to President Mohamed Morsi and the foreign minister to help her search for her son in the Ethiopian prisons, and to send him back to Egypt to spend the rest of his term in an Egyptian prison, so that she might see him before her death. “My son is a victim of their erroneous thoughts and sick whimsical attitudes.”
