Anniversary of suicide or assassination... Ashraf Marwan, the angel of the Mossad, or a loyal patriot, as Mubarak described him?

CAIRO

- At exactly 1:30 pm on Wednesday, June 27, 2007, Egyptian businessman Ashraf Marwan fell from the balcony of his home in an upscale neighborhood in the British capital, London, to die at the age of 63.

And he wrote that day a mysterious end to a man who was the son-in-law of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, then a secretary of information with President Anwar Sadat, so that his mysterious end is similar to the famous actress Suad Hosni, and Laithy Nassef, who was the commander of the Republican Guard Corps during the era of Sadat.

On July 1, 2007, Marwan's funeral was held in Cairo, in the official presence of senior statesmen, led by Gamal Mubarak, son of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and then Sheikh of Al-Azhar, Muhammad Sayed Tantawi, amid a state of controversy over the man's truth, and whether he was really a spy for Israel Or was he a double agent for Cairo, acting as part of Egypt's plan to deceive Israel?

Did he actually commit suicide or was he intentionally killed?

loyal patriot

In the wake of his death, Hosni Mubarak, the late Egyptian president, described Marwan as a loyal patriot, and did many patriotic acts that it was not time to reveal.

The BBC reported that the British documents say that Marwan played a role in helping Egyptian President Anwar Sadat obtain weapons in preparation for the October 1973 war against Israel.

His family accused the Israeli intelligence service (Mossad) of killing him for his role in deceiving Israel during this war and providing them with misleading information.

A client of Israel

But these official statements from Mubarak did not resolve the controversy that has been associated with Marwan’s name, since the publication of the book “Myth vs. Truth: The Yom Kippur War, Failures and Lessons” in 2004, which was written by the former head of Israeli military intelligence, Eli Zira, in which he stated that Marwan was an agent, and informed Israel dated the start of the October 1973 war, but Israel's leaders ignored the warning.

Years ago, Tel Aviv released what it said was the official warning telegram sent by the head of the Israeli Mossad, Zvi Zamir, one day before the outbreak of the war, after his meeting with Ashraf Marwan, where Marwan showed him the zero hour.

In January 2020, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Ashraf Marwan was one of the best Egyptian spies who provided the best services to Israel, adding that “Marwan’s motives for offering his services to Israel and betraying his country were not clear, but from the reasons that are said to be dissatisfied with Abd Nasser, who tried to prevent his marriage to his daughter Mona.

And Netflix produced a movie based on the Israeli novel entitled "The Angel: The Egyptian Spy Who Saved Israel" by Israeli writer Uri Bar-Josie, which details Marwan's communication with the Israeli Mossad.

Mubarak warns Al-Faqi

While the Israelis assert that Marwan was a spy for them, Egyptian officials do not provide clear answers, despite Mubarak's public description of him as a loyal patriot.

But in a television interview with Mustafa El-Feki, who worked as an information secretary with President Mubarak for several years;

He said Mubarak was warning him about Marwan by saying, "The tape recorder is always in his pocket."

Al-Fiqi says that a month before Marwan’s death, he asked him to write an introduction to his memoirs, and Al-Faqi did not mind and asked to read it. Marwan told him that he would bring it to him next time, and Al-Fiqi believed that Sadat was assigning him certain tasks with the Israelis, and he may have used it as bait, or told them The date of the "October War" without the specified time.

In a television interview, former Intelligence Chief and Minister of War Amin Howeidi said that all possibilities exist, and that it cannot be denied or confirmed that Marwan was a spy, explaining that there is an important rule in dealing with such issues;

What cannot be categorically denied, you must treat it as an existing fact.

face with structure

Marwan himself denied the accusations of being a spy for Israel during his lifetime, according to the novel by the late writer Muhammad Hassanein Heikal in his book "Mubarak and his Time".

Heikal tells about a meeting he had with him in London months before his departure, where Heikal confronted him about what was rumored about him, so Marwan took out a clipping from Al-Ahram newspaper for him, which published the text of what Sadat said in honoring Marwan when he left his position in the Presidency of the Republic. He says I did great services to Egypt?

Marwan continued, looking embarrassed - and Haikal's narration - "Do you imagine that Gamal Abdel Nasser's brother-in-law is a spy, and you were the closest of friends to him and knew him?"

Heikal replied, "Let me be clear with you. No certificate of good conduct and behavior from Anwar Sadat, and no affinity with Gamal Abdel Nasser give infallibility to anyone. We are facing a real problem that requires real convincing clarity."

In the same book, Heikal says that the dignity of the country and the reputation of Ashraf Marwan himself require an official Egyptian investigation into the matter, by a high-level body that includes judicial and parliamentary elements, provided that the Military Intelligence and the General Intelligence are represented in it, and I think that without that, things will not be right.

Was Mossad assassinated him?

With the controversy raging over the fact that he was a double agent or a spy who leaked to the Israelis the date of the attack in the "October War", the controversy also remains about the fact of his mysterious death. The British Public Court of Inquiry ruled in July 2010 that the death "is unknown," and the judge said that The evidence provided by the police and the testimonies of witnesses do not support any hypothesis regarding his death.

Mona Abdel Nasser - Marwan's widow and daughter of President Gamal Abdel Nasser - commented that she was satisfied with the ruling because it proved that Ashraf did not die by suicide, adding in press statements that her husband believed before his death that his life was in danger, and that he told her 9 days before his departure that the assassination squads Tracking his movement, and stated that the Mossad assassinated him.

Mona - who has been his wife for about 40 years - also confirmed that the draft of his personal memoirs disappeared from his bookshelf, knowing that the notes, if published, would have exposed the secrets of the intelligence services in the Middle East, she said.

He paid with his life for his memoirs

This story is confirmed by the Egyptian journalist and broadcaster Amr Al-Laithi, who conducted a television investigation from London about the departure of Ashraf Marwan, and also met with Mrs. Mona Abdel Nasser, who said, "I think he paid his life for the diaries he wrote, and these diaries were read to me, and those diaries were not for narration." Rather, it was a study, and he did not tell me if it was his role with the Egyptian intelligence against the Israeli intelligence, that he was secretive.”

Al-Laithi also quoted an eyewitness who met him that he saw Marwan’s body flying in the air for two seconds, and added that “several minutes after the accident I saw two people standing on the balcony and looking down, and when I thought again I saw that what happened was strange, but they may be from His family members are inspecting the place after the accident, and that makes sense."

WikiLeaks: He was killed

And in an investigative report by Al-Jazeera entitled "How did Ashraf Marwan's life end in London?"

As part of Mysterious Endings, the investigation team obtained a document from WikiLeaks that says the strongest assumption on the part of British security services is that Marwan has been murdered, but they cannot say so publicly.

And in the television investigation - which was broadcast in November 2017, - a supposed representative scenario of the killing of Marwan and his throwing from the balcony of his apartment was presented, and the most ambiguous question remained: Who killed Marwan?

Marwan was born in 1944 to a father who was an army officer, and after obtaining a Bachelor of Science in 1965 he worked in the central laboratories of the armed forces, then an assistant to Abdel Nasser.

After Nasser's death in 1970, he became the political and security advisor to the late President Anwar Sadat. He also headed the Arab Organization for Industrialization between 1974 and 1979, then retired and went to Britain, where he lived as a businessman until his death.