The State Security Prosecution, which is investigating into the group accused of affiliation to Takfir wal Hijra organization, unveiled a plan to blow up the Ibn Khaldoun Center for Development Studies, run by Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, by means of a car bomb. The group planned the attack after contacts had been made with extremists from abroad.

Security Services arrested this cell a few days ago and referred it to the State Security Prosecution last week in a case coded 1,055 - Supreme State Security. ‘Al-Masry Al-Youm’ exclusively published the details.

The investigations were conducted over the past few days until early in the morning by the head of Prosecution, Counselor Tarek Abdel Shakour. They unveiled that the group was influenced by contacts made with some foreign elements and by what some newspapers published about Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, his secular articles and his relation with the US. It also emerged that the explosion was due to be carried out by means of a car bomb to be detonated inside the center building in Mokattam.

According to the information obtained by ‘al-Masry al-Youm’, the members in custody are now 62, the largest number of extremists arrested in connection with a single case over the past few years.

Some of the accused were recognized through their signatures on the list of volunteers for jihad (holy war) in Iraq against US forces. This list had been prepared by the Lawyers Syndicate, but one of its officials, affiliated to the Nasserist Movement, delivered this list to Security Services.

The investigations also unveiled that Syrian authorities expelled some group members who had tried to travel to Syria a few days ago. The authorities refused to let them in and informed Egyptian Security Services.

It also emerged that some of the accused established a link with two renowned Salafist preachers, from whom they developed their intransigent religious ideas, such as forbidding the prayer in mosques with tombs – according to the text of the investigations –, excommunicating those who do not pray and rulers, and attacking foreign tourists.

The head of the defense, Montasser el-Zayat, denied all charges and said before the prosecution that they are legally groundless as there is no material evidence.

He demanded that all the accused be released on any bail deemed appropriate by the prosecution, while the latter, for its part, ordered that the accused be kept in custody for 15 days pending the investigations