Nabil Naim: Al-Zawahiri tried to kill Hassan al-Alfi and Atef Siddiqi

Nabil Naim Abdel Fattah was born in 1956 in Boulaq Abu El-Ela neighborhood, to which my family belongs too. He received a Bachelor degree of Science from the Cairo University, the place where he started his religious commitment.

After graduating he traveled to the city of Alexandria to trade in clothing and there he met a number of people who were released in the military technical case in the seventies and who were belonging to the Jihad Organization like Dr. Mohamed Khalifa, who introduced him to Ibrahim Salama who was killed in one of the Organization’s battles with the security forces after killing Sadat.

He was accompanying Nabil the time he was killed, and Ibrahim Salama was the leader of the Organization in Alexandria. Their relationship strengthened to an extended that led Nabil to join the Organization and he was living in and sharing same apartment rented by a group of individuals together.

His colleagues in the house belonged to the al-Takfir wa al-Hijra group. After many discussions Sheikh Nabil was able to convince number of them that the ideas they believe in are not true and thus they left the al-Takfir group. As a result, al-Takfir group leaders warned Nabil and asked him to quit talking to its members and discussing issues related to their thoughts and threatened him, but he did not respond to them.

He ignored this warning, what caused them to set up an ambush against him during prayer time and assaulted him with swords and they were almost going to kill him. These injuries are still found on his body until now, despite the passage of more than 35 years. Sheikh Nabil killed a member of the al-Takfir wa al-Hijra group and was imprisoned for three months and then released on bail. After this incident, he left Alexandria and returned to Cairo because of his fears of the al-Takfir group’s reprisal.

He began to treat his injuries at the hands of Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda current leader, and thus joined his group. Ayman al-Zawahiri introduced him to Lieutenant Colonel Essam Al-Kamari who was putting the work plan of the Organization, which was according to Sheikh Nabil sort of a military coup backed by a group of civilians belonging to the Organization.

Al-Kamari asked al-Zawahiri to train the members of the Organization on the war and on facing the armors, and thus Dr. Ayman decided to send the members of the Organization to Afghanistan for training, but he was unable to fund the group’s travel costs. Therefore, he asked the help of a Kuwaiti personality named “Mohammed Habib Monawer” who paid for the costs of their travel, but the events of 81 were earlier.

Sheikh Nabil said: “We got to know the group of Mohammed Abdel Salam Faraj, it offered us a plan to kill Sadat during a military parade, and asked us the assist materially by weapon and money”. We thus provided him with assistant and the brothers succeeded in the implementation of the scheme to kill Sadat, and Khalid Islambouli was arrested along with his companions.

The Organization was disclosed while trying to arrest us at Al-doikh. I was accompanied by Essam Al-Kamari and Ibrahim Salama and a battle between us and the security took place during which Salama was killed and we buried him in the mountain and ran away. Al-Kamari was arrested when trying to go to meet Al-Zawahiri in the mosque of the city of students in Imbaba, and then I went to Brother Mohammed Korni in the area of Imam Shafei and two days later the security came and clashes took place between the two sides.

As a result, Korni was killed and I was able to escape and then went to Al-Marj area in Cairo and after forty days a fierce battle took place between me and the commandos during which I was injured and arrested. I was sentenced to seven years imprisonment in the Jihad Organization’s major case.

During our imprisonment we have made an assessment of what we have done of events and decided not to carry out any armed actions in Egypt after studying our experience in Egypt in 81 and studying the Syrian experience in 82 and we decided to take advantage of the Arab presence in Afghanistan.

We put a plan summarized in the following: after the war against Russia ends, we try to extend our Arab Afghans to South Yemen, which was governed by the Communist Party, and we try to overthrow it and to establish an Islamic emirate therein and from there to Somalia. Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri was released in 1986 and has traveled in 87 to Afghanistan and I was released in 88 and became the emir of the Jihad Organization.

Regarding his relationship with Sheikh Aboud Al-Zomr and the rest of the Organization’s leaders in prison he said: Sheikh Aboud and the rest of the leaders were in prison and did not have any work related relation. Our role was to help from inside the prisons and their non-participation with us in work was for security reasons.

Sheikh Nabil continues saying: after I left prison I traveled to Sudan and met Dr. Al-Zawahiri there and we agreed on the implementation of the plan previously referred to it, and then I went back to Cairo and I took the charge of arranging the ranks of the Organization and preparing and equipping the young people and transporting them.

I was able to transport a large number of members to Afghanistan, about three hundred, and the travel charge per one person at that time was three thousand Egyptian pounds and all the needed money was sent to us by Osama bin Laden.
He used to send us tickets through the Commission for Relief for free and I used to send the members of the Organization to Saudi Arabia. I also used to send them from Egypt to Turkey and then the Egyptian security realized this.

Then I traveled to Afghanistan and met there with all the leaders of Jihad, including Abu Obaida El Behery whose real name is “Ali Al-Rashidi”, al-Qaeda’s official before Abu Hafez al-Masri “Mohammed Atef”, as well as the Sheikh of Jihad Dr. “Sayyed Imam”. We launched the work, developed the plans, and followed up their implementation and this was in Peshawar, the place where I stayed for two months and then entered Afghanistan.

The battles were taking place therein and I attended the opening of the Khost city and some other small towns and stayed in the battles for four months and then went back to Egypt to complete the work and continued working until I was arrested late in 1991 and was not released until after the January 25 revolution.

Source: Islam Times