CAIRO, July 16: Egypt said one of its citizens arrested on suspicion of involvement in the July 7 London bombings has ‘no link’ to Al Qaeda, but British investigators are expected to press their inquiry in Cairo, newspapers here said on Saturday.
In a statement published by the daily Al Gumhuriya, Interior Minister Habib al Adly said media reports about Magdy Mahmud Mustafa Nashar, 33, ‘are unfounded and are only hasty deductions’.
He has ‘no links with the Al Qaeda Network’, Mr Adly said of the suspect, who was arrested late on Thursday in Cairo’s southern suburb of Maadi, in the working-class district of Bassatin, security sources said.
US television network ABC News first reported the arrest on Friday, saying Mr Nashar was suspected of being the bomb-maker behind the attacks on three underground trains and a double-decker bus.
But Mr Nashar’s father, Mahmud, a blacksmith, described his son as a religious and pious man who obtained his doctorate from Leeds University earlier this year.
“I wasn’t aware that the police were searching for him. It is impossible that my son could have planned such a terrible thing as that,” he said in an interview with the London Daily Telegraph.
An interior ministry statement said the suspect ‘has denied any involvement in the London bombings’.
According to the statement, Mr Nashar had gone to Britain ‘to study at Leeds University and has resided in Britain since 2000’.
“He had come back to Egypt for a month and a half holiday and was planning to go back to Britain to resume his studies and ... all his belongings are still in his flat in Leeds,” the statement said, adding that “the investigation would go on.”
Mr Nashar grew up in a tiny flat in a decrepit five-storey building a stone’s throw from the local mosque in the squalid, working-class Cairo district of Bassatin, in the Abu Breik neighbourhood.
Despite his family’s modest background, the young Nashar went to a private French-speaking high school, relatives told Egyptian media.
He then studied biochemistry at the University of Cairo, graduating with a bachelor of science in 1994 and a masters in 1998, the interior ministry said.
The following year he received a scholarship from Egypt’s National Research Centre to study biochemistry at Leeds University, but spent a term studying chemical engineering at North Carolina State University.
He obtained his doctorate in biochemistry in February, relatives said.
Before leaving Cairo, Mr Nashar, his younger brother Mohammed, and their father prayed at the mosque five times a day, including every dawn prayer.
The former imam of the mosque said Mr Nashar used to offer free chemistry lessons to young students in his spare time. Those who knew Mr Nashar in Egypt insist that he was religiously devoted and not an extremist. —AFP
