Here’s a Bloomberg report, for which I did some research assistance, on Sinai’s Islamic militancy…

Red Sea Resort Attacks Show Threat of ‘Decentralized’ Terrorism

Oct. 9 (Bloomberg) — Two years of terror attacks on Egyptian Red Sea resorts were born behind the yellow and brown doors of a tiny mosque in the northern Sinai Peninsula desert.
Egyptian officials and court documents say a dentist named Khaled Mussaed sat on a prayer rug and preached to young men the need to punish unbelievers, unobservant Muslims and Western and Jewish perpetrators of supposed crimes against the Muslim world.

In October 2004, his disciples bombed Taba on Israel’s border, then Sharm el-Sheikh in July 2005, and finally, in April 2006, Dahab. The attacks took at least 120 lives and shattered Egypt’s self-image as a Middle Eastern oasis of calm.

Egyptian security officials say that the bombers, their techniques and organization provide a textbook example of the changing nature of terrorism in a post-Sept. 11 world. The sudden emergence of an obscure organization with the will and capacity to lash out also reflects the findings of a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate made public Sept. 26 describing a “decentralized” but global threat from terrorist cells “with anti-American agendas.”
Egyptian officials say outrage over the war in Iraq and violence between Israel and the Palestinians are converting disaffected young men who had once only spent time complaining into killers.
Rushing Into Action
“Elements that have never taken part in any secret activities are rushing into terrorist actions,” said Ahmad Omar, an aide to Egyptian Interior Minister Habib Ibrahim al-Adli. “Events in Palestine and Iraq are creating a highly tense atmosphere everywhere. That’s the problem we face right now.”
Unless President Hosni Mubarak grants a stay of execution by Nov. 30, three Egyptians will be executed for the Taba attack: Younis Elian Abu Jarir, Osama Abdel-Ghani al-Nakhlawi and Mohammed Jaez, all from Arish on Sinai’s north coast.

At least 13 other suspects have been sentenced to long prison sentences. During two years of police crackdowns, a dozen other suspects were killed in shootouts, including Khaled Mussaed. Trials for Sharm el-Sheikh bombing defendants will begin this month, prosecutors say. While the Dahab attack is still under investigation, several suspects have been jailed.
The triangular Sinai Peninsula is made up of three worlds: the Mediterranean coast in the north, the south along the Red Sea, and the jagged desert mountains that separate the two. The south’s so-called Red Sea Riviera, a string of beach resorts, is largely cleansed of Egyptian’s bustle: Hotel driveways are gated, set far back from the main roads and away from Egypt’s dust and noise.
Bikinis and Dolphins
Development of the Red Sea Riviera is a pet Mubarak project. The region rivals Cairo and its pyramids as a tourist attraction; a television ad campaign calls it a place “Where Everyone Wears a Smile,” and shows women in bikinis cavorting with dolphins.
Arish, the largest city on the north coast along the Mediterranean Sea, isn’t glamorous. It contains a few mildewed hotels, and no bikinis are in sight; women sometimes swim in full-length caftans as a sign of Muslim modesty. Just a block off the main boulevard, paved roads turn to dust. Khaled Musaed gave his lectures on holy war at the mosque in the nearby district of Malhalha.
‘Dirty Deeds’
Arish seems a divided city. Some residents speak of “dirty deeds” and say they are tired of the town’s renown as the capital of Egyptian terror. Others say the bombings reflect a deep dissatisfaction with poverty, heightened by months of police crackdowns.
“It’s a general phenomenon: Everyone is angry,” said Ashraf Ayoub, a member of the left-wing Tagammu party and a civil servant who lives in Arish.

“They convinced me of the need for holy war against the Jews, Americans, Italians and other nationalities that participated in the occupation of Iraq,” said Younis Elian Abu Jarir, according to a confession offered as evidence in court. Abu Jarir was a taxi driver whose job was to ferry members of the terror cell around, Egyptian officials say.
The second condemned colleague, Mohammed Jaez, an appliance repairman, allegedly instructed members of Mussaed’s cell how to use timers. The third, Osama Abdel-Ghani al-Nakhlawi, put the bombs together, Egyptian authorities say. Mussaed chose two suicide bombers to ram an explosive-filled truck into a Taba hotel. Both, Suleiman Felayfel and Iyad al-Falestini, died in the attack.
Just Talk
“Before Taba, we knew of this group, but they just talked,” said Omar, the Interior Ministry official.
After Taba, members of the cell dispersed. They hid among houses and farms in north Sinai and in the mountains, where they were hosted by a gun and drug smuggler named Salem Shanoub. Shanoub was a fugitive from police and possessed no Islamist ideology, Egyptian authorities say. He supplied the group with weapons and explosives. “He and Mussaed shared only an anti- authority streak,” said Omar.
Even as Egypt launched a massive police sweep of north Sinai, Mussaed began to organize bombings in Sharm el-Sheikh. Abu Jarir made reconnaissance trips to the resort, discussing with colleagues whether a car bomb could mount the steps of a hotel. On July 23, 2005, he drove three suicide bombers to the city.
Light and Flame
“We agreed with them they wouldn’t blow themselves up until we’d driven a half-hour out of Sharm el-Sheikh,” according to Abu Jarir’s testimony. “We saw a glimmer of light and flame and we knew it was an explosion.”
For the first time, the group videotaped three suicide bombers as they made declarations before embarking on their Sharm el-Sheikh mission. “He who looks at the massacres being perpetrated in the east and west, north and south, will find that the victims are Muslims,” one of the bombers said, in reference to the West’s war on terror, according to Egyptian authorities.
After the Sharm el-Sheikh attacks, Mussaed, Abu Jarir and other members of the underground moved around Sinai and as far west as Ismailia on the Suez Canal.
They hid in quarries, cement factories and private homes. They planned to flee into the Gaza Strip, but police ambushed a car carrying Mussaed, Abu Jarir and a comrade named Taleb Murtada. Mussaed tried to pull out a rocket-propelled grenade launcher from the back seat. Police shot him down. Murtada ran from the car, hid behind a tree, fired a rifle and was shot dead.
Torture
Ahmed Seif al-Islam, lawyer for the three condemned suspects, said he believes the confessions presented in court were dictated by police and the defendants tortured. “They are confessions that were produced to confirm a police theory about the bombings,” said Seif al-Islam, who heads the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, a non-governmental organization.
In Arish, relatives of al-Nakhlawi, the alleged bomb-maker, deny that he was involved. They say he fled to the mountains in order to escape a crackdown that netted hundreds of innocents. They said he attended the Malalha mosque, but only to pray.
“May God take revenge on the president, on the judge and on anyone who testified against him,” said Naima Mohammed, his mother.
The police have taken steps to curb radical preaching in Arish mosques. Imams face scrutiny and are asked to inform on their congregations, Ayoub said.
At the Malalha mosque, the brown and yellow door is closed and locked; donkeys and goats, but no worshipers, wander through its sandy back yard.

Related links:

HRW: Mass Arrests and Torture in Sinai

Two more citizens tortured in Arish

Sinai torture fields