Gama'a Al-Islamiyya

aka Islamic Group, IG

Gama'a al-Islamiyya, Egypt's largest militant group, seeks to overthrow the Egyptian government and replace it with an Islamic theocracy. The organization, formed in the late 1970s, carried out terrorist attacks on foreigners and police officers. Because so many of the attacks targeted tourists, Egypt's tourism industry had been severely affected.

The U.S. State Department reports that at its height, Gama'a boasted membership of several thousand as well as thousands of sympathizers. The group claimed responsibility for the 1995 attempted assassination of Egypt's president Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, as well as many attacks on tourist buses and a Nile cruise ship. While Gama'a operates primarily in southern Egypt, the group has support in Cairo, Alexandria, and other cities, as well as a presence in Sudan, the United Kingdom, Afghanistan, Austria, and Yemen. The Egyptian government has said that Gama'a received financial support from Osama bin Laden as well as from Iranian and Afghan groups.

In November 1997, Gama'a members killed 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptians near the Valley of the Kings in Luxor. The tourists were entering the ancient Hatshepsut Temple when six gunmen disguised as police officers fired automatic rifles into the crowd. The international press reported that some of those killed had been stabbed after they were shot. In the gun battle, all of the terrorists were killed by Egyptian security forces.

When claiming responsibility for the attack, Gama'a maintained that it had intended only to take the tourists hostage, in an attempt to secure the release from prison of the group's spiritual leader, blind cleric Omar Abdel Rahman. (Rahman was convicted of involvement in a broad terrorist conspiracy that culminated with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He had fled Egypt and lived in exile in Brooklyn before his conviction.) However, witnesses reported no attempt at hostage taking, just unprovoked gunfire. The flood of travel cancellations following the attack caused an estimated $500 million in lost revenue.

Egypt immediately cracked down on Gama'a, sentencing those convicted of participating in terror attacks to death in military courts. Defendants in the trials accused the state of torture and, in support of their claims, displayed injuries to the press.

According to the U.S. State Department, Gama'a, currently led by Mustafa Hamza, has become fractured as jailed and exiled members vie for influence and leadership. In a break with Hamza's leadership, Rifa'i Taha Musa, a former senior member of Gama'a, signed bin Laden's 1998 fatwa against the United States. The fatwa called for attacks against U.S. civilians. Taha Musa appeared in late 2000 with bin Laden and his second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in an undated video threatening retaliation against the United States for Rahman's continued imprisonment. Gama'a has publicly denied supporting bin Laden and has not broken the unilaterally declared cease-fire, despite Taha Musa's call to arms. However, from his prison cell in the United States, Rahman withdrew his support for the cease-fire in June 2000.