Egyptian army seizes Palestinian fugitive associate of Mohamed Dahlan

Security sources and eyewitnesses have revealed that the Egyptian army have detained a fugitive Palestinian who is an associate of ex-Fatah thug Mohamed Dahlan. Rassad news network said that the man, known in Egypt as “Shaikh Fathi Al-Falastini”, was living in Al-Safa neighbourhood of Rafah on the Egyptian side of the border with the Gaza Strip. He was claiming to be a “religious preacher”.

The fugitive was in possession of documents described as “dangerous” by the armed forces. “They contained plans for acts to be carried out by members of Fatah in the cities of Rafah and Shaikh Zowayyid,” they said.

According to Rassad, the army found images of Al-Safa and Al-Arish military camps as well as military checkpoints. They also found two international telecommunications sets and a sum of 40,000 Egyptian pounds and $5,000. The man was transferred immediately to the headquarters of the Nation al Security Services in Cairo.

A number of allegations have linked UAE-based Mohamed Dahlan to the ongoing violence and unrest in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, for which Hamas has often been blamed.

Around 200 Palestinians from Fatah and the Palestinian Authority security services fled the Gaza Strip into Egypt in the wake of Hamas’s purge of the security agencies in 2007. As documents revealed by Hamas earlier this week reveal, some have been involved in the Egyptian media’s vicious and defamatory propaganda campaign against the Palestinians of Gaza.