Egypt: The Plot to Kill Nasser

For years Gamal Abdel Nasser has been fomenting all manner of uprisings, internal strife and coups d’état through out Africa and the Middle East. Last week it became clear that he had suffered a dose of his own medicine— and nearly choked on it. Spread across Cairo’s government-controlled papers was news of an incredible plot to assassinate Nasser and most of his top aides, blow up the nation’s major power plants and communications centers, and unleash a reign of terror that would sweep out his regime and install an entirely different set of rulers in its place.

Imperialists? Communists? Israelis? Not at all. Behind the whole thing was Egypt’s powerful Moslem Brotherhood, an organization of religious fanatics who want to ban such modern immoralities as pictures of the human form, return to the laws of the Koran. Their aim: to set up a sort of Prophet’s Republic, whose President would be declared caliph of the Moslem world.

Quintet Groups. Led by Said Ramadan, an exiled and devout Egyptian editor (he kneels for his daily prayers even when aboard an airliner), the brotherhood has been trying to over throw Cairo governments since the early days of King Farouk. Nasser tried to crush it out after one of its members fired eight shots at him during a mass rally in Alexandria in 1954, but despite the execution of six of the brothers and the imprisonment of thousands of others, the organization survived. Establishing headquarters in Geneva, it was soon distributing an anti-Nasser magazine throughout the Arab world, smuggling arms to its underground organization in Egypt, raising money from such sources as the governments of Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

In 1960 the prison terms of the Alexandria plotters began to expire, and many organized themselves into “quintet groups”—men who had spent five years in prison—and began searching for new blood. Carefully screened recruits were brought in, sent to secret camps for training in judo, dagger fighting and the use of weapons and explosives, then assigned to cells. One cell consisted of three engineers whose job was to plan the sabotage of power stations. A cell of chemists prepared bombs. An airline pilots’ cell took charge of arms smuggling, and coordinated activities between the underground and Geneva.

Tip from Hussein. By this year all was ready, and the plot was scheduled for the end of July during the regime’s 13th anniversary celebrations. It seemed thorough in every detail. Hussein Tawfic, a veteran terrorist who had successfully rubbed out one of King Farouk’s finance ministers, was put in command of a select group assigned to blow up Nasser in his motorcade. If he failed, other brothers were ready to blast Nasser off his presidential train somewhere between Cairo and Alexandria, and still others were prepared to shoot him on the way to his home in the suburbs of Cairo.

The amazing thing is how close they came to pulling it off. The tip-off came in June, when King Hussein of Jordan heard about the plot from his own intelligence network and informed Nasser. With little time to spare, secret police began tearing Egypt apart, looking for hidden arms, explosives and terrorists. Not until mid-July did they catch up with Tawfic’s assassination teams. Not until Egyptian air-force rebels were ten minutes flying time from Nasser’s summer residence at Alexandria was their loaded bomber shot down.

The anniversary passed without incident, but the brotherhood had not given up. Despite wholesale arrests of its members, it was still strong enough to attempt a suicide mission. The task was entrusted to Brother Ali Ismail el Fayyoumi, one of Nasser’s presidential honor guards and, according to the Cairo press, such a crack shot that “he could take one quick look at his target, close his eyes and shoot and hit.” Assigned to shoot Nasser on his return from Saudi Arabia three weeks ago, El Fayyoumi nearly got his chance. Police broke up his cell only two days before Nasser’s return.

Although official press reports tried to dismiss the plots as the work of “obscurantist feudalists,” the regime was clearly disturbed. Police had arrested an estimated 6,000 conspirators, but it was far from certain that all cells had yet been wiped out and that it was safe for government leaders to appear in public; three brotherhood agents were known to be operating in Morocco, where Nasser was due to appear this week for an Arab summit conference. Even more unsettling was the fact that the brotherhood had managed to attract young university graduates, airline pilots and trained chemists and engineers—the very type of people whom Nasser might expect to be most loyal.