Mass Arrests Reported In Egypt

Press, Volume C, Issue 29669, 13 November 1961, Page 13

Mass Arrests Reported In Egypt

(liZ Press Assn.— Copyright) LONDON, November 12. Hundreds of persons, including at least 50 army officers, have been arrested in a purge in Egypt, according to the “Sunday Telegraph.”

Only 60 arrests have been admitted by the authorities The newspaper correspondent also claims that 600 people have had their property and bank accounts sequestrated. Most of the arrested officers are relatives or friends of these people, be says The rest of Ute officers appeared to be a group close to President Nasser who were now classed as "deviationists.” There were persistent reports that 16 officers arrested for plotting disloyalty to the

regime included two or three on the personal staff erf the Vice-President (FieldMarshal Hakin Amer). Jews Named The “Sunday Telegraph" said the latest list of sequestrations named 171 Jews of Egyptian or foreign nationality. It was understood that at least another 400 sequestrations had been decided. The sequestrations were thought to be the result of the official theory in Cairo that the Syrian coup was the result of army officers being suborned by “capitalist reactionaries.” They were intended, at least partly, to ensure that nc capital was available to finance a counter-revolution in Egypt With few exceptions, the sequestrations were aimed at Jews. Greeks. Copts. Levantines. Italians, Armenians, and Lebanese. The “Sunday Telegraph" said the arrests and sequestrations were symptomatic of the difficult position in which President Nasser found himself Apart from the moment of the Suez landings, be was today in a more hazardous political situation than at any time in the last nine The loss of Syria Involved a loss of prestige the regime could ill-afford. It was the culmination of a series of foreign experiments in which pan-Arabism. pan-Africanism, and “positive neutralism” had

all played unsatisfactory parts. Added to this was an unsatisfactory economic position, and dismay at many aspects of the Government programme.