Egyptian Suspect a Source of Pride to Family, Friends
Magdy el-Nashar, a chemist linked to the London
bombings, stood out
in his poor Cairo community for his academic achievements.
By Megan K. Stack
Times Staff Writer
July 17, 2005
CAIRO — In a stuffy stucco housing project overlooking the railroad
tracks, neighbors continued to fret Saturday over the fate of the man
they called, with some reverence, "Dr. Magdy."
Magdy el-Nashar, a 33-year-old biochemist, had arrived at his parents'
home on vacation from Britain on June 30. Glowing with pride, his
mother walked him door to door to greet the neighbors. El-Nashar,
seized last week as a suspect in the July 7 suicide bombings in London,
wore Western slacks and button-downs instead of traditional dress, and
his face was shaven clean, friends said.
"His mother was so
happy," said Om Karim, a 38-year-old woman who lives one floor beneath
the El-Nashars. "She said he'd just received his PhD from abroad, and
we were also very happy."
Life is arduous in the tumbledown
tenements and slapdash shacks of Cairo's southern slums, and in the
scruffy corridors of the apartment building, El-Nashar's story had
shone as a flash of hard-sought upward mobility.
In El-Nashar's
neighborhood, the dirt roads are prone to sewage overflows and heaped
with decaying tires and broken bits of rusting machinery. Roosters
strut, and emaciated dogs poke in the garbage. Even the scrawny trees
are streaked with dust.
But El-Nashar, whose father is a
retired office worker at a large construction firm, was determined to
get ahead, neighbors said.
He attended a French school. He even impressed neighbors by bringing
home German girls he'd befriended while growing up.
"He was romantic," said Hisham Abdel Hamid, a 34-year-old friend. "He
had affairs with girls. He'd stay up late and go to parties. He didn't
have any political affiliations."
Like other longtime neighbors, Abdel Hamid described El-Nashar as
religious but not a religious extremist.
During his college years at Cairo University, he practiced kung fu and
tutored neighborhood boys in English and French, they said. He also was
said to have joined a moderate Islamic student organization that held
prayers and lectures.
"He was so smart," Abdel Hamid said. "He could look at a book and
memorize it by heart."
After college, El-Nashar won a government scholarship, enabling him to
earn a master's degree in chemistry. He completed his work at the
National Research Center in Cairo, where he specialized in developing
anti-corrosive paint, friends said. After that, they said, he won
another government scholarship, which he used to pursue doctorate
studies in the United States.
"He's very shy. When you talk
to him he looks down, always down," said Ahmed Faizallah, a biochemist
who has been a close friend of El-Nashar since the two were students.
El-Nashar didn't last at North Carolina State University, leaving a few
months after beginning his studies in 2000. "He didn't like the
situation there," Faizallah said. "He sent me an e-mail that I never
forgot. He said that the United States was a big joke."
El-Nashar transferred to the University of Leeds, where he studied
controlled-release antibiotics. In contrast to his melancholy in the
United States, he appeared to thrive in his new environment.
"He liked Britain very much. He said he'd like to stay there forever,"
Faizallah said. "He found it a very multicultural society. He was
living in an almost Islamic city. He didn't feel a stranger there."
El-Nashar married an Egyptian woman in 2001, his friends said.
Faizallah was surprised to learn of the wedding. "Magdy is very
secretive," he said.
She, too, was religious, friends said.
The couple has a daughter, a 3-year-old who lives with her mother, the
friends said, adding that the marriage didn't last.
"He
had a lot of trouble in the marriage. They were fighting all the time,"
Faizallah said. "Nobody expected that Magdy would have this trouble.
He's a very cool, calm guy."
El-Nashar lost "a lot of money"
in the divorce, Faizallah said, but was hoping for a fresh start. He
planned to spend the coming years working in Britain. He had already
bought a return ticket for Aug. 10 and had a job offer from a British
pharmaceutical company, he told Faizallah.
"He looked great," Faizallah said. "He'd gained some weight. His face
was glowing. He looked very happy."
Staffers at the National Research Center seemed so convinced of
El-Nashar's innocence that they spent hours Saturday discussing how
they might lobby the government for his release, Faizallah said.
"If you talk to him, really, I am sure you'll say he's innocent," he
said. "He is just living a religious life, and this is not a crime."
El-Nashar was arrested Thursday afternoon after praying at a mosque a
stone's throw from his parents' house, friends and relatives said.
Refaat Abdel Hamid, who works cutting marble blocks at a local factory,
also was at prayers that day. Three unmarked cars parked outside the
mosque and about a dozen plainclothes agents were inside.
"They
waited until the prayers were over, and then some of them went into the
mosque and politely escorted Magdy into one of the cars," he said.
Lawyer Mamdouh Ismail said he would soon file a request to the public
prosecutor for El-Nashar's release. If there are charges against him,
the government should announce them and allow defense lawyers to attend
the interrogations, the Cairo attorney said.
"I'm sure he is
innocent," the lawyer said. "I've been following closely Islamic groups
in Egypt for 25 years, and his name never surfaced in any case or among
any militant circle. I've never heard of him before the attacks."
Besides, Ismail said, "if he was a militant, he would have never come
back to Egypt. This is the most cooperative country in
counter-Islamism. It's no secret they would have arrested and tortured
him, and even handed him back to the British."
*
Times staff writer Hossam Hamalawy contributed to this report.
