Denial of Prior Knowledge of the Sinai Plot

arabic.cnn.com/2013/middle_east/5/26/egypt.unrest/index.html

26/05/2013 - Maj. Gen. Bahaa Helmy, Assistant Head of the Central Security Forces for Planning and Follow-up at the Ministry of Interior, told the state television website "Egypt News" that the situation ...

Sunday, 26 May 2013, last updated 08:40 (GMT+0400)

CAIRO, Egypt (CNN) -- Egypt's Public Prosecution denied having informed the security services of a plot to kidnap soldiers in Sinai a week before the operation, while the Egyptian Ministry of Defense affirmed its intention to stand up to terrorist attempts. In the same context, a notable position emerged from the Islamic Group (Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya), which pointed to the existence of groups in Sinai that declare President Mohamed Morsi an "unbeliever". Maj. Gen. Bahaa Helmy, Assistant Head of the Central Security Forces for Planning and Follow-up at the Ministry of Interior, told the state television website "Egypt News" that the security situation in Sinai since 2011 "requires a security presence and development", noting that one hundred combat groups from the Central Security Forces, trained to the highest level, had been deployed to the area. For his part, Counselor Hisham El-Qarmouty, in a special statement to the official Middle East News Agency, denied the accuracy of a local newspaper's report that the security services had received information from the Supreme State Security Prosecution a week before the kidnapping about a plot to kidnap police personnel in Sinai. In a related context, Khaled El-Sherif, media adviser to the "Building and Development" Party, the political arm of the Islamic Group, affirmed that the operation to free the soldiers kidnapped in Sinai "proved to everyone the strength of the Egyptian State and the ability of the Armed Forces and the Presidency to manage political crises and protect Egypt's security." El-Sherif said that Sinai is "full of many takfiri elements who declare the ruler (President Mohamed Morsi) an unbeliever, even though he is the first Islamist and elected president, on the pretext that he has departed from Islamic Sharia and does not apply it," stressing that these notions are "mistaken and incorrect, for a Muslim president who is unable to apply some or all of the Sharia may not be declared an unbeliever, nor may anyone rebel against him." The group that had kidnapped seven soldiers in Sinai released them on Wednesday, in an operation shrouded in mystery, as it is still not clear how the gunmen were "forced" to release the soldiers without a single shot being fired, contrary to the anxiety that had crept into the hearts of most Egyptians after a video was published of the soldiers begging President Morsi to respond to the kidnappers' demands.