Egypt asks to visit students caught infiltrating Israeli border

CAIRO - The Egyptian embassy in Tel Aviv has asked to visit six Egyptian students arrested in Israel and charged with conspiring to abduct and kill Israel Defense Forces soldiers, a Foreign Ministry official said on Sunday.

Egypt has also asked for official copies of the charges against the students, Assistant Foreign Minister Assem Mugahid told reporters.

A gag order on the affair was lifted September 12, after the six were indicted in the Be'er Sheva District Court.

The six entered Israel illegally a little more than a year ago, after having spent three years planning their attack. The Border Police patrol caught them three kilometers from the Israeli-Egyptian border, and under interrogation by the security services, they revealed their plan: to jump an army patrol near the border, kill the soldiers, steal their guns and uniforms and use their patrol vehicle to travel deeper into the country. Next, they planned to jump a tank, kill most of the soldiers and take the driver hostage. Finally, they planned to drive the tank to Mitzpeh Ramon, shell a local bank branch, rob the bank and return to Egypt. The money they stole was to be used to buy land in Sinai, near El-Arish, and set up a training base there for anti-Israel terrorists.

When captured, the six were carrying 14 knives, an air gun, dark clothing, overcoats, a telescope, walkie-talkies, and maps of Israel with settlements and roadblocks marked.

The defendants are Mahmad Abu Dahab, 25, and Mustafa Abu Dif, Mahmud Azzat Ali, Mustafa Mahmadi, Salam Mahmad and Imad Tohami, all 21. Five of them studied together at Cairo's College of Technology and became attracted to radical Islam there; the sixth was an acquaintance of theirs.

The families of the students, talking to the Egyptian media, have dismissed the accusations, saying they went to Israel looking for work and had no politically motivated intentions.

All six are charged with conspiracy to commit a crime, infiltrating into Israel, illegal entry and being in the country illegally. The indictment stated that they acted alone, rather than under the auspices of any terrorist organization. It also said that they had tried to carry out their plan several times before, but were not able to slip over the border.

Commenting on one of the more odd aspects of their plan, Inspector Moshe Moshe of the police's Southern District, who supervised their interrogation, explained: "They based their plans on pictures they saw on television, and they thought that there was a tank in every town in Israel. That is why they planned to capture such a vehicle to execute their plot."

When interrogated, the six said the planned attack was to avenge "the killing of Palestinian children." Moshe, however, said their return to religion appeared to be the main motivating factor. He noted that they left wills asking that they be recognized as martyrs should they be killed while carrying out the attack.

The 320-kilometer-long border with Egypt is notoriously porous, and there is a constant flow of drugs, prostitutes and foreign workers across it. This criminal traffic generates millions of shekels a year in revenue, despite the efforts of a brigade of Border Police, which assumed responsibility for the border from the Israel Defense Forces two years ago and patrols it constantly. As a result, the defense establishment has long feared that terrorists could take advantage of this border as well - especially since the IDF's intensive activity along the Gaza-Egyptian border has made arms smuggling via that route more difficult.