Posted on 04/15/2002 10:00:26 PM PDT by grimalkin
Brazilian police have arrested a man believed to be a member of the terrorist group that killed 58 foreign tourists, including six Britons, in Luxor, Egypt in 1997.
Mohammed Ali al-Mahdi Ibrahim Soliman was arrested in front of his house in the city of Foz de Iguacu, 510 miles south west of Sao Paulo.
The Supreme Court had ordered Soliman's arrest after receiving a request from Egypt for his extradition to face charges of terrorism.
The head of the federal police office in Foz de Iguacu, Joaquim Mesquita told the Agencia Folha news agency that Soliman was a member of the Al-Gama'at Al-Islamiyya, also known as the Islamic Group.
The police and Supreme Court could not be reached for comment.
The group was blamed for the November 1997 attack which claimed the lives of 24-year-old air hostess Karina Turner, her five-year-old daughter Shaunnah, and Karina's mother Joan, 53, all from Ripponden, West Yorkshire. Also killed were pensioners George and Ivy Wigham, from Swanley in Kent, and Sylvia Wilder, who held British and Bulgarian passports.
Agencia Folha said Soliman has been living in Brazil for the past eight years and is married to a Brazilian woman with whom he has a two-year-old daughter.
"He never broke any law in Egypt," Soliman's lawyer, Fernando Cesar Resta Antunes told the Globo television network. "We must now find out what exactly the Egyptian government considers terrorism."
Just a guess, but probably killing 58 people.
Presumably this should read, "He never broke any law in Brazil." I assume mass murder is against the law in Egypt.
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