CAIRO -

On the afternoon of October 6, 1981, a group of soldiers in the Egyptian army assassinated former President Mohamed Anwar Sadat, in the incident known in the media as "The Platform Incident", during a military parade that was held every year to celebrate the anniversary of the war that Egypt led by Sadat against Israel in October 1973.

Several months before the incident, security and diplomatic agencies had expected the assassination of Sadat, which was agreed with by the journalist writer Mohamed Hassanein Heikal (who was famous for his closeness to former President Gamal Abdel Nasser and was opposed to his successor Sadat) in his book "Autumn of Anger" in which he reviewed what he considered factors that created A general public anger at the late president, and they all met and clashed on the podium on the afternoon of October 6, 1981.

In addition to the popular anger, Sadat also reached the maximum levels of anger at his opponents from various political and ideological trends, when he arrested hundreds of opponents and activists, in what was known as the arrests of September 1981.

The assassination of Sadat was carried out by first lieutenant in the armed forces Khaled al-Islambouli, former army officer Abdel Hamid Abdel Salam, first lieutenant reserve Atta Tayel Hamida, and volunteer sergeant sniper Hussein Abbas Muhammad, who fired the first fatal shot, and later attributed to the Islamic Group (formed by the leaders of the Jihad Organization At that time) preparing a plan to seize power.

The death sentence was carried out against those who shot Sadat, while those accused of participating in the operation remained inside prisons for decades, and some of them are now opposition figures abroad, and there are others who preferred to remain silent and stay away from politics.

Between execution, imprisonment and stalking

On March 6, 1982, the Supreme Military Court issued its verdict on 24 defendants who appeared before it in the Sadat assassination case, two of whom were acquitted.

They are Omar Abdel Rahman, the spiritual leader of the Islamic group who died in 2017 in American prisons, and another named Mr. Salamouni.

The death sentence was carried out against Islambouli and Hussein Abbas by firing squad for being subject to the law of military judgments, while Muhammad Abd al-Salam Faraj (the Mufti of the Organization of Jihad), Abd al-Hamid Abd al-Salam and Atta Tayel (two former officers) were executed as civilians, while varying sentences were issued against the rest of the accused, most notably Abboud. Al-Zumar, a former military intelligence officer, is currently one of the symbols of the Islamic Group.

In 1984, there was another major trial for Al-Zumar and his companions in the case of the assassination of Sadat, which was called the “Great Jihad Case.” About 400 defendants were brought before the judiciary, who were convicted of more than 300 people of being members of the organization, while some of them were executed later on charges that included the assassination of a number of people. Security men, according to identical press and media reports.

From missionary schools to jihad

September 23, 1981 was the beginning of the end, when Islambouli (the main suspect in the assassination of Sadat) was informed that he had been chosen to participate in the military parade commemorating the "October Victory" in the presence of the president, and that he would lead a unit of 12 guns driven by tractors in the parade.

According to what Heikal mentioned in his book “The Autumn of Rage,” Islambouli came to the idea of ​​killing Sadat as an individual who belonged to the Islamic group, whose entire activity was underground, and had sentenced Sadat to death for his departure from the limits of Islam, as a prelude to seizing power after salvation. from him.

One of the paradoxes in Islambouli’s life, according to Heikal, is that the first school he entered was a missionary school in Minya Governorate. He also joined, in his high school years, a school that was originally owned by an American missionary.

Islambouli's plan for the assassination was to attack directly on the platform from the front, and indeed he was able to direct powerful bullets at Sadat, which was one of the causes of his death.

Arranger

Abd al-Salam Faraj (the Emir of the Islambouli group within the Islamic Group) - whom Heikal described as the key to all practical arrangements for the implementation of the assassination plan - was 27 years old at the time, and graduated as an electrical engineer, and his writings carried a dominant tone, which is the necessity of getting rid of the unjust ruler.

After al-Islambouli decided to kill Sadat in the military parade, he asked Faraj to help him with two or three people who would share his plan with him, so he brought him two assistants whom no one could find more willing and qualified to participate in the operation.

On this, Haykal says that it was strange that a man could, in less than 24 hours, bring two young men with such a degree of competence to carry out the required task. This simply means that Faraj had at his disposal a vast resource of young people from whom he could select for any task that suits her.

The sniper, the engineer and the officer

As for Islambouli's assistants in the assassination operation;

The first of them was Atta Tayel (27 years old), a reserve officer who graduated from the Faculty of Engineering and then left the service to work in his field of specialization.

The second, Hussein Abbas, was a specialist in firearms training at the Civil Defense School, and won the Army Shooting Championship for 7 consecutive years. He fired the first shot that hit Sadat from afar. After the accident, he managed to get out of the parade area unharmed, and no one stopped him. When he was arrested two days later.

The fifth defendant, who was also executed, was Abdel Hamid Abdel Salam, a former air defense officer, and at his home in Cairo the operation was being planned, and he was shot next to Islambouli with bullets to the abdomen during the incident.

senior officer

As for the senior officer accused of participating in the operation, he is Lieutenant-Colonel Aboud Abdel Latif Hassan Al-Zumar, and he was an officer in the Military Intelligence.

At that time, the Minister of Interior informed Sadat personally about the issue of the clans as an officer in the armed forces, so that the president himself would issue an ultimatum in which he said, “I know that there is an officer on the run, and he may be listening to me now. We arrested all the others in 5 minutes, and if he managed to escape, I tell him We are behind him too."

The groups were the most prominent advocates of not rushing into the military clash, as he requested a preparation period during which the organization would be able to recruit many types of army officers to ensure the success of the revolution, noting that all his plans were rejected, but his hope remained that the attack on the platform in the sixth From October, it will be enough to create a state of chaos in the state that the jihad movement can develop to achieve what it wants, according to the book "Autumn of Rage".

Al-Zumar was sentenced to two prison terms in the cases of the assassination of Sadat, 25, and the Jihad Organization, 15, before he was released in March 2011 by a decision of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which ran the country's affairs after the January 25 revolution of the same year. , among dozens of others.

Other convicts

In addition to these, the case included other names, including Tariq al-Zumar, a cousin, cousin and brother-in-law of Aboud al-Zumar, and he went out with him in the releases of 2011 by a decision of the ruling military council at the time.

Tariq al-Zumar is one of the few who continued his postgraduate studies during prison, until he obtained a doctorate in constitutional law with an excellent grade with honors.

Tariq was one of the leaders of the Islamic group who launched the famous revisions in 1997, which stated that change does not come with violence.

Al-Zomr contributed to the establishment of the Building and Development Party, as a political arm of the Islamic Group after the 2011 revolution, and took the position of the group’s spokesman and party leader, and his attendance at the October 2012 war commemorations provoked a sharp attack on the late President Mohamed Morsi.

In 2019, Tarek al-Zumr was included on the lists of terrorism, and later the party was dissolved, and al-Zumr became one of the most prominent opposition figures outside Egypt today.

The convictions in the case of Sadat’s assassination also included prominent Islamic figures, including Karam Zuhdi, who died in February 2021, along with his sister-in-law Fouad Al-Dawalibi, Najah Ibrahim, Osama Hafez, and Assem Abdel Majid, all of whom are historical leaders of the Islamic Group who launched the initiative to stop the violence the end of the nineties of the last century.