EGYPT: Repentance, Retreat and Murder

Sheik Mohammed Hussein Zahaby, 64, was sleeping soundly at his home in Helwan, 15 miles south of Cairo, when four armed men in police uniforms burst in and dragged him away. They were not policemen. Sheik Zahaby, Egypt's former minister of religious affairs and a distinguished expert on Islam, was kidnaped by youthful Muslim extremists who threatened to execute him unless the government paid $300,000 and released 60 of their comrades from jail. Even while the government negotiated, the kidnapers last week carried out their threat. Three days after the sheik's disappearance, his body was discovered in a house...

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