Egypt holds brother of al-Qaeda official
Confirmation follows '99 conviction for Jihad group's attacks
09:04 PM CST on Thursday, March 4, 2004
Associated Press
CAIRO, Egypt - Egypt acknowledged for the first time Thursday that it is holding Mohammed al-Zawahiri, the brother of al-Qaeda's No. 2 man.
Mr. al-Zawahiri was thought to have been in Egyptian police custody for at least three years, but the government never acknowledged it. He was sentenced to death in absentia in 1999 for his role in attacks by the militant group Islamic Jihad.
His older brother, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is the top aide to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and allegedly once led the military wing of Egypt's Jihad group. Ayman al-Zawahiri also was sentenced to death in absentia in the same 1999 trial.
Interior Minister Habib el-Adly said Mohammed al-Zawahiri would stand trial soon but did not say when.
Under Egypt's laws, a suspect can be detained without charges or trial indefinitely. Egyptian law doesn't provide for a new trial for a suspect who has been convicted in absentia in a military court and returns to the country. It only permits clemency pleas to the president.
Mr. al-Zawahiri's relatives were surprised when they read a recent newspaper report about his whereabouts.
"We didn't know if he was alive or dead," said Mahfouz Azzam, Mr. al-Zawahiri's great uncle.
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'The day after' Arafat dies - not just an IDF game
By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent
The Israel Defense Forces recently conducted a simulation "war game" about what would happen the day after Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat passes away.
The exercise examined several possible scenarios and how Arafat's death - by natural causes - would influence the domestic situation in the Palestinian Authority and its relations with Israel. The Central Command exercises involved senior officers; apparently, the General Staff will continue where the Central Command officers left off.
Security sources told Haaretz that the exercise was not the result of any new information about the state of Arafat's health.
Last fall there was speculation about the 75-year-old's health after he appeared to be fatigued and gaunt, but after medical treatment he seemed to be feeling fine.
The army regards "the day after" as a "new chapter" in PA - and Palestinian - history. The assumption is that everything that will take place - the funeral, the mass demonstrations, power struggles for the leadership - will lead to a change in the Palestinians' strategic relationship with Israel.
The exercise included issues like where the funeral would be held, the route it would travel, the possibility of violent demonstrations, loss of control by the PA, and attempts by the Hamas to forcibly grab power in Gaza.
There is also growing speculation in the PA about what happens on the day after. Channel 2 reported this week that Arafat wants a crypt for himself on the Haram al-Sharif, the Temple Mount, where there are graves of many past Palestinian leaders.

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Source: Menatep CEO Stephen Curtis killed in copter crash
By Dafna Maor
Stephen Curtis, the chief executive of Menatep, the bank that hold shares in the Russian oil firm Yukos, was killed in a helicopter accident in the United Kingdom, TheMarker has learned from a source near the company.
Official confirmation of the news could not be obtained. The BBC reported on the helicopter crash near Bournemouth airport Thursday morning, noting that two people had been killed but not revealing their names.
The British news service reported that the helicopter, an Augusta, fell near a wooded area, and that police were searching for possible additional victims.
Menatep is a holding company belonging to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former chairman of Yukos, who Moscow arrested in October 2003 for alleged tax evasion and fraud.
When arresting Khodorkovsky, the 44 percent stake he and his partners in Menatep held in Yukos were frozen.
Khodorkovsky claims the arrest was designed to pressure him because he had financially backed opposition parties and even considered running against Russian president Vladimir Putin in elections.
The holdings of Khodorkovsky and Menatep in Yukos are considered to be worth almost $15 billion. In February 2004, Khodorkovsky's oartners, including Leonid Nevzlin, who has moved to Israel, proposed selling the shares to the Russian government subject to Khodorkovsky's release.
Curtis, a former senior partner in the law firm of Curtis & Co, was named to lead Menatep in November 2003. The Menatep group controls assets worth some $30 billion.


Smart he is not
By Doron Rosenblum
The bizarre and puzzling episode known as the "Tennenbaum affair" is gradually turning into what Alfred Hitchcock called a "MacGuffin" - an inscrutable subplot, shrouded in mystery, that diverts attention from the main plot. In our case, the real and main mystery is the weird behavior of Ariel Sharon - not just in this affair, but throughout his three years as prime minister, if not his entire public career.
For months, everyone wondered what lay behind Sharon's unusual efforts to secure Tennenbaum's return from Lebanon - his one tenacious, consistent and accomplished action so far in his two terms as prime minister. Yet it was precisely for the sake of this certifiably dubious character that Sharon threw himself into the fray.
He did so with exceptional determination and caring, such as he has never shown for any other positive goal in the last three tears - certainly not for the security, well being and future happiness of Israel's residents.
What was the secret of the spell that Tennenbaum, of all people, cast over Sharon? Is it the fact that he was a colonel in the Israel Defense Forces? Would Sharon have shown similar empathy for an ordinary honest citizen who was innocent of any wrongdoing?
Or could it be that it was the twisting, dark morality of the man that spoke to the heart of one for whom the wink, the deceit and the "non-truth" are no strangers at any level of behavior - from the reprisal raids half a century ago to the Lebanon War, from the settlements to the police investigations?
This week, the conundrum seemed to have an answer by Ma'ariv daily's exposure of the "missing link" between Sharon and Tennenbaum. Strangely, though, these revelations don't so much shed light as deepen the dark mystery of Sharon's behavior. Indeed, the Tennenbaum affair is no more than an allegory - one more fiasco in the chain of Sharon fiascos, which share amazingly similar characteristics.
They all begin with winking, nodding and deception and false presentations of events. They are all wrapped in arrogant, self-confident manifestations of infinite cunning. They all eventually end in disgrace, bereavement and failure, if not in some historic blunder that sets in motion generations of grief.
Isn't this the way - with a spin-rich, self-defeating "shrewdness" - that the "affair of the fence" was handled? Isn't this how our whole life was run by Sharon for the past three years? And isn't this how - steeped in the cunning of personal conduct - Sharon found himself with egg on his face over and over again?
This is how the strange "deal" with Hezbollah was carried out; this was how the chance to consolidate Abu Mazen as Palestinian prime minister was missed; this was how the Palestinian Authority was smashed to smithereens, sewing terrorist chaos in the territories and strengthening Hamas.
And with the same arrogant blindness, in a kind of domino run of damage on top of damage, it was the same Sharon who, in his shrewd "war of choice" in Lebanon brought about the creation of Hezbollah on the border of Manara and Metullah.With the same "shrewdness" he drove home the wedges called settlements.
There is no reason to believe that the deceptions swirling around the "road map" or the "disengagement plan" are not another "shrewd plan" of Sharon's that is starting to unfold - a thing of shreds and patches, of caprices and improvisations. There is no sort of reasonable response to any objection or warning put forward by either right or left. Why operate without dialogue? Why a wall like this along such a route? And what will we do when the fence is bypassed by shooting and missiles? And what will happen in the chaos behind the wall?
Yet, in the very contemplation of these conundrums, the mystery of Sharon's behavior solves itself. Maybe it has nothing to do with sly interests, deep psychology born of a difficult childhood, or some brilliant conspiracy. Maybe the solution lies right in front of us, so therefore we can't see it. It may be elementary, dear Watson, it may be the reason is quite simply a lack of intelligence.
Let it be said at once that Sharon may be as sharp as a whip, as cunning and elusive as an eel, but - as the Nahal Brigade troupe used to sing - "he's not so smart." Certainly not so smart as many, himself included, may think. It's plain that the guy doesn't think things through, not at a national level, and not in personal behavior. His thinking is a bit lowbrow. Yes it's hurried, packed with tactics, lacking any sense of broad horizons or distilled knowledge, void of any real, responsible strategy.
That may be an unpleasant explanation for the mystery of the systematic, unrelenting failure of Sharon - as politician, statesman, leader, and personally - except for his skill at getting elected at the polls. But is there any other explanation?
Gloomy and bizarre as it may sound, Sharon, who is considered to be the personification of Israeli resourcefulness, is actually a feckless type - a kind of "shrewd" ne'er do well who has stepped out of all the Jewish jokes together, from Hershele to the Wise Men of Chelm.
He's the one who waits for either for the squire to leave or the dog to die; he the one who ate smelly fish and was beaten and kicked out of town; he's the one who carried out his threat and went to sleep hungry. And, as the situation of Sharon and state of the nation attest that both are trapped in the same quagmire of misery, it might even be funny - if the joke wasn't on us.

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Sharon expected to survive latest scandal
March 5, 2004
Scrambling to fend off the latest scandal, Israel's Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, has denied any wrongdoing in securing the release of an Israeli in a prisoner swap with Lebanese Hezbollah guerillas.
On Wednesday, Mr Sharon dismissed as a "wild attack " a report in the Maariv daily suggesting his push for Elhanan Tannenbaum's release in the January 29 deal had been spurred by close business ties he once had with the man's father-in-law.
Leftist politicians called for the right-wing leader, already under investigation in two corruption scandals, to resign or face an official inquiry. Opposition parties requested a no-confidence vote in parliament, which is expected on Monday.
The vote is not expected to pose any immediate threat to Mr Sharon.The Government has easily survived almost weekly no-confidence motions recently, despite a rift with far-right coalition partners angered by his plan to uproot Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip.
Since Mr Tannenbaum's release in a deal in which the bodies of three Israeli soldiers were also returned and 400 Arab prisoners were freed, he has been grilled by security agents over allegations he was involved in illegal business deals when he was abducted in 2000.
Maariv said that Mr Tannenbaum's father-in-law, Shimon Cohen, had been a business partner of Mr Sharon's family in the 1970s at their ranch in southern Israel.
Israeli soldiers yesterday shot dead a 14-year-old Palestinian boy who was caught in crossfire during a raid on a refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip, witnesses said.
Palestinians also accused the Israelis of killing a militant who died in an explosion at his home in the Rafah camp, but the army said it was not responsible.
The raid came a day after three Palestinians from the militant Hamas group were killed in an Israeli air strike on the car in which they were travelling south of Gaza City.
Reuters, Los Angeles Times