It was decided that El Said Hassan Al-Mokhis, an Egyptian...

It was decided that El Said Hassan Al-Mokhis, an Egyptian citizen arrested in Uruguay in 1999, be extradited to his homeland to face charges for the 1997 massacre of 22 European tourists at Luxor Temple. According to the Uruguayan daily Ultimas Noticias, the Supreme Court agreed to the extradition of Al-Mokhis after Cairo promised he would not face the death penalty. The law in Uruguayan law forbids extraditing a suspect to a country where they could be subjected to a penalty more severe than that applied for the same offence in Uruguay, which does not have capital punishment. Al-Mokhis was the subject of an Interpol arrest warrant when he was detained by Uruguayan immigration authorities on January 29, 1999, while trying to enter the country from Brazil with a false Malaysian passport. Egypt requested his extradition soon afterward. The request was approved by two lower courts, but the suspect's Uruguayan lawyer appealed to the Supreme Court, asserting that Cairo could not offer the necessary due process guarantees. Authorities in Egypt say Al-Mokhis belongs to the Islamic fundamentalist group Gama'at al-Islamiyya, blamed for the tourist massacre at Luxor.