Tal'at Fu'ad Qasim

Tal'at Fu'ad Qasim (also spelled Qassim) (arabic: طلعت فؤاد قاسم) (executed 1995) was the leader of Egypt's militant Gama'a Islamiyya organization until he obtained political asylum in Denmark. He was executed in secret in 1995, following the first modern 'extraordinary rendition' at the hands of US authorities.

Qasim got his start in the Islamic Group in the late 1970s, when he was head of the Student Union at Minya University in Upper Egypt; according to some sources, he was the immediate superior in the organization of Anwar Sadat's killer, Khalid Islambouli. [Mubarak, Hisham, What Does the Gama'a Islamiyya Want? Middle East Report, Jan., 1996, p. 40, accessed at http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0899-2851%28199601%2F03%290%3A198%3C40%3AWDTGIW%3E2.0.CO%3B2-T] He was arrested and imprisoned following the assassination, escaping after serving eight years in prison. He then joined the Jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan (actually operating from Peshawar, Pakistan); in 1989 he became head of the Gam'a Islamiyya. After being sentenced to death by an Egyptian security court, he obtained asylum in Denmark, despite his public espousal and embrace of terrorist violence against civilians. [see for example Mubarak, pp 43-44]

In September 1995, he was kidnapped in Croatia during a trip to war-torn Bosnia. His capture was orchestrated by U.S. authorities, who had concluded that he posed a threat to US interests. After questioning aboard a U.S. Navy vessel, he was handed over to Egyptian authorities in international waters. [Human Rights Watch, Black Hole: The Fate of Islamists Rendered to Egypt, available at: http://hrw.org/reports/2005/egypt0505/, pp 19-20]

Qasim, who had been tried and convicted "in absentia" by a military tribunal in 1992, was then executed by the Egyptian government, allegedly after torture. According to Human Rights Watch, Qasim's was the first case of 'Extraodinary Rendition'; predating by 6 years the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

References