Seven members of the Egyptian security forces kidnapped last week by suspected Islamic militants in the country’s Sinai desert were released unharmed on Wednesday after a massive military deployment in the lawless peninsula.
Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s Islamist president, greeted the men at a military airport in Cairo and vowed to continue a crackdown in the troubled Sinai during an address to the nation in which he appeared surrounded by the army’s top brass.
“This is not a short term operation that ends,” he said after thanking officials in the army and police profusely in an apparent attempt to scotch swirling rumours of a rift.
Mr Morsi did not reveal how the soldiers were freed, but his spokesman said there had been “no negotiations, and no concessions to anyone”.
The abduction of the men – six policemen and a border guard – highlighted the continued security vacuum in the Sinai, a rugged mountainous area long neglected by the government which borders the Gaza Strip and which harbours jihadi militants.
Mr Morsi has faced a barrage of criticism charging that he is soft on terrorism and that the close ties between his Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas in Gaza have emboldened militants in the peninsula.
Hundreds of tunnels under the border with Gaza are used to smuggle goods and arms into the Palestinian territory which is blockaded by Israel and to a lesser extent by Egypt.
The Sinai, a sparsely populated land inhabited by Bedouin tribes, is also a cross roads for weapons, drugs and people trafficking. Arms from Libya flooded in after the fall of the Gaddafi regime, and police control has been loosened since the 2011 overthrow of strongman Hosni Mubarak in Egypt.
Militants have used the territory to launch attacks against Israel. Egyptian security installations in the peninsula regularly come under fire from militants. Sixteen Egyptian soldiers were killed by suspected militants on the border with Israel in August, but so far the authorities have shed no light on the perpetrators.
“I want to tell Dr Morsi that you cannot be on the side of Egypt and of that of Hamas,” said Refaat al-Saeed, a leader of the leftwing Tagammu party. “You cannot be on the side of Egyptians security and with the continued existence of the tunnels at the same time.”
As Egyptians held their breath in the past week, and the captors released footage of the kidnapped soldiers calling on the president to secure their freedom by releasing imprisoned militants, pressure built on Mr Morsi to “assert the prestige of the state” and to use overwhelming force in the region.
But while the return of the troops without any bloodshed should come as a relief to Mr Morsi, the absence of any details on how they were freed is certain to stoke further speculation that a deal had been done with the jihadis.
Omar Ashour, a professor at Exeter University who has done research in the Sinai, said it was possible local tribal leaders had helped negotiate the release, or that Salafi militants who had laid down their arms in recent years played a role.
Despite the criticism of Mr Morsi, he said the security services continued to apply pressure on militants in the Sinai .
“There are militants who commit armed actions and who want to maintain camps and mount attacks against Israel every now and then,” he said. “They had expected an Islamist president to allow them to do that but they find they are the target of a crackdown.”
FT
