Egypt won a new victory in its long war with violent...

Egypt won a new victory in its long war with violent Islamists when leaders of a feared terrorist group publicly renounced violence and asked forgiveness for their crimes.The godfathers of the Gamaa Islamiya, which has been closely linked to al-Qa'eda, were interviewed in prison by the editor of a state newspaper who had survived an assassination attempt by extremists.They were photographed smiling round a conference table denouncing the September 11 attacks and declaring that the murder of innocent civilians was condemned by Islam. The Gamaa once made Egypt tremble, killing 1,200 people in a six-year campaign that culminated in the murder of 58 tourists and four Egyptians at Luxor in November 1997. Public revulsion turned its numerous supporters in the slums of Cairo and the primitive villages of upper Egypt against the organisation, forcing a retreat from violence.But the main reason for the waning power of the Islamists is the security forces' success in destroying the activists' networks and eroding their morale.Their methods have been ruthless, using terror against the terrorists themselves, but they have been devastatingly effective.Since the early 1990s the security forces have arrested thousands of suspected Islamist activists or sympathisers, detaining them without trial or processing them through special courts.The Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR) estimates that 16,000 men are currently being held for political crimes. Since 1992, 108 prisoners have been sentenced to death, of whom 80 per cent have been executed. Extra-judicial methods are also used. Even though Egypt signed the UN convention against torture in 1986, the practice is widespread. The last EOHR report listed 28 recent examples.