CONSPIRACY AGAINST EGYPTIAN STATE DISCOVERED

Grey River Argus, 28 February 1949, Page 5

CONSPIRACY AGAINST EGYPTIAN STATE DISCOVERED

Details are now available of the in Cairo]

Dettails are now available of the circumstances which led to the arrest in January of Field Marshal Aziz El Masry Pasha, former Inspector-Gen-eral of the Egyptian Army, and others, indicated that there was a conspiracy to overthrow the present regime in Egypt. The public security authorities have uncovered a plot following receipt of an anonymous letter. Documents and letters implicating Aziz El Masry and young men said to have been connected with recent criminal incidents in Cairo have been discovered following extensive house searches in the suburbs. A bag containing seditious circulars, two tommy guns, four hand grenades and a number of revolvers and 64 cartridges was also found. According to the informant the members of the Society used to meet in cafes in various parts of Cairo. Ferik Aziz El Masry Pasha has had an adventurous career. Although born in Cairo he is of Turkish origin and was educated at the Military Academy in Constantinople and Lie Turkish Staff College. Passing oit with distinction in 1904, he served with the Turks in the Yemen and m Tripoli against the Italians, but from the beginning of his military career Aziz El Masry was an active memuer of the Young Turks Movement. Later he helped to found another Secret Society which sought to create a Turco-Arab Empire and the Young Turks feeling that they had been double-crossed, trumped up a charge against him. This resulted, after the commutation of a death sentence, in banishment from Turkey. In Worm War I he served for a time with the Senussi in Libya, and afterwaios went to Hedjaz where the late King Hussein appointed him his Minister of War. He resigned eventually and came back to Egypt. Just before the outbreak of World War 11, Fei'ik Aziz El Masry Pasha was for a short time Inspector-General of the Egyptian Army.