A suicide bomber who tried to kill the Egyptian interior minister has been revealed as a former army officer by the jihadist group which claimed responsibility for the attack.The officer, whose identity has been confirmed by the army, is shown in a video posted by the group driving the car in which he died and speaking to a camera.
He attacks both the military and the Muslim Brotherhood, saying that the time for peaceful protest is over. "I tell the Muslim people, feel the victory of Allah!" he says. "But you have to instil fear for Allah. Don't stand there bearing your chests but bearing booby traps and explosive belts to kill the enemies of Muslims. As they kill us so will we kill them."
The 31-minute video, which also includes shots of the group training and diatribes against the Egyptian government and the Muslim Brotherhood, ends with a clip of the explosion last month. A huge fireball is seen billowing across the streets of Heliopolis, the smart suburb of Cairo where the attack took place.
Mohammed Ibrahim, the interior minister, was unharmed but one man died and more than 20 other passers-by were injured, including a 16-year-old British girl of Somali origin, Deqa Hassan, who lost a leg.
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The attack was the first suicide bombing of an insurgency by a group calling itself Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, Supporters of Jerusalem, and sent shock waves through the ruling military establishment. The group's attacks had previously been largely confined to the Sinai and Suez Canal.
Since then, the army has conducted an aggressive scorched earth policy against its home region in the north-east Sinai, sending in helicopters and tanks to arrest and kill suspects and destroy not only their houses but those of family members. It also targets those it suspects of being part of the extensive network of smugglers, many of whom have for several years sent supplies including weapons into neighbouring Gaza.
In the video, Walid Badr, a major expelled from the army in 2005 for extremist views but shown wearing his uniform, gives his life story and how he became disillusioned.
"I spent years among you and I know for certain that you have been trained to fight religion," he says. "You have learned your military craft in American colleges, and begun to love Americans more than your own people."
His life story will itself be of concern in itself to the authorities, who fear that militants who have gone to wage jihad abroad will return to join the Islamist insurgency against military rule. He had fought in Afghanistan and Syria, and spent a year in custody in Iran after trying to cross its territory to reach Iraq.
