Details of Egyptian Security Scandal Emerging

CAIRO — Despite a government order banning the publication of any information about the case, details are beginning to emerge about a highly sensitive and politically embarrassing security scandal involving attacks against American and Israeli officials in Cairo over the last three years.

The case concerns a left-wing group called Egypt’s Revolution, which counts several senior Egyptian military officers and a former intelligence operative among its members and is believed to have received financing from Libya.

The fact that military officers, who are said to include three colonels, were involved in the group is a major embarrassment to the government of President Hosni Mubarak, Western diplomats said.

However, on Wednesday, Ahmed Bahaa Din, a respected columnist with the semiofficial newspaper Al Ahram, also accused Khaled Nasser, the eldest son of the late President Gamal Abdel Nasser, of being involved in the group.

“He is involved in it and it is very embarrassing that he is the son of Nasser,” Bahaa Din told a meeting of the Foreign Press Assn. in Cairo.

Given the news blackout imposed on the investigation by Egyptian authorities, the nature of the younger Nasser’s alleged connection to Egypt’s Revolution is still unclear. However, rumors of his suspected involvement, in some unspecified way, have been rife in Cairo’s diplomatic corps for several weeks.

According to Western diplomats familiar with the case, most of these reports suggested that Nasser, an instructor of engineering at Cairo University, was not an active participant in the group, but was on friendly terms with several of its members and met with them frequently.

Egyptian security officials have refused to comment on the case. And, threatened with prosecution if they violate censorship rules, even Egypt’s robust opposition press has only alluded to the affair, saying that Nasser’s “testimony” was being sought by security authorities in connection with an “important case recently uncovered.”