"This is a case about trying to tarnish Hezbollah's image in Egypt, ..by an aging president to reclaim his waning regional influence.."

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McClatchy's, herePosted by G, Z, & or B at 4:50 PM

"When Egyptian police pounded on the door before dawn and took her husband Nimr away, Sahar Zibawi had no idea that her partner was about to become a pivotal player in a convoluted political plot involving gun running to Gaza, a notorious African smuggling route once used by the French poet Arthur Rimbaud, an Iranian-backed Hezbollah cell and an attempt by Egypt's aging president to reclaim his waning regional influence.
"We've been put in a whirlwind and we don't know why," Zibawi said nervously while she met surreptitiously with a McClatchy reporter in this Mediterranean coast town that's a gateway for smuggling to Palestinian-controlled Gaza. Nimr Zibawi, a Sinai construction worker, is one of more than 40 suspects accused of joining a Hezbollah cell that Egyptian authorities claim was plotting to destabilize President Hosni Mubarak by attacking ships in the Suez Canal and hitting tourist-dependent Red Sea resorts.

After weeks of intense questioning that their attorneys said included daily beatings and torture, Nimr Zibawi and at least one other suspect recently made videotaped confessions in which they admitted to helping smuggle weapons to Gaza militants, but not to plotting attacks inside Egypt.

"If they helped the Palestinian resistance, maybe it's true, but not in the way our government claims," said Malek Adly, an attorney with the Cairo-based Hisham Mubarak Legal Rights Center, which is representing Zibawi and eight others. "Nothing they did was intended to harm Egypt."

In some ways, Mubarak's reaction has been more important to Middle East politics than the allegations themselves: "Beware the wrath of Egypt." The 81-year-old Mubarak is looking to reclaim his role as a regional power broker at an auspicious time: President Barack Obama has chosen Egypt as the setting for his highly anticipated June 4 address to the Arab and Muslim world.

Obama is looking to transform America's image in the Middle East — and Mubarak could play a critical role in helping the new president succeed. Israel and the U.S. have tried to enlist pro-Western, Sunni Muslim nations such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan in a regional coalition to counter Shiite Iran and Hezbollah. Until now, many Sunni Arab leaders have been reluctant to get into a public diplomatic feud with Iran. That may be changing.

"The situation has become incredibly complex because it's not just an Egypt issue, it's about where the Middle East heading next after being completely destabilized by the Bush administration," said Issandr el Amrani, a Cairo-based analyst for the International Crisis Group. "Iran represents the revival of the rejectionist camp, which stands against everything Egypt has built over the last 30 years," el Amrani said. "There are concerns in the regime and the wider establishment in Egypt that doesn't want to see the country go back to its anti-Western positions." The Sinai desert has become a remote battleground in this regional ideological feud.....

If the Sinai suspects were accused merely of smuggling guns for Palestinian militants, this case might not be as significant. Egyptian police, however, said that the men were involved in plans to destabilize Mubarak by plotting attacks on popular Sinai tourist resorts, scouting out ships in the Suez Canal, and, in a pointed jab at Iran and Hezbollah, accused them of spreading Shia Islam.

"This is a case about trying to tarnish Hezbollah's image in Egypt," Adly said. "There has been a shift in politics between Hezbollah and Egypt." ....since Nasrallah publicly urged Egyptians to rise up in December and challenge their president for refusing to fully open his border with Gaza and allow Palestinians to escape Israel's three-week military offensive....

Israeli papers reported that their government had provided Egypt with critical intelligence about Nasrallah's agents in the Sinai that led to the first arrests in December. That Egyptian sweep began three weeks before Israel launched its military offensive in Gaza......"