Al-Akhbar Newspaper*

Translated by Areej Fatima Al-Husseini

The Israeli authorities have returned the corpse of Mohammad Salah, the soldier who murdered three Israeli troops after leaping the border barrier, to the Egyptian authorities. This measure comes while the concerned Egyptian authorities, whether military or affiliated with the Ministry of Interior, continue to conduct extensive investigations with the soldier’s superiors, family, and close friends. Salah’s family was instructed by security officials that the funeral would take place promptly at night and in the presence of a very small number of people. While his brother and uncle were detained, the rest of his family was instructed not to speak to the media or provide any information about his life.

Shortly after the incident, the Egyptian National Security Agency detained a number of the martyr’s close friends without providing any information or details about the area to where they were transported to. The detainees were expected to be released within hours of the end of the investigations, which aimed mainly at determining Salah’s motives for the operation. They were also looking for evidence he had spoken with his friends and colleagues in the unit as well as the training facility where he used to train before heading to his work site.

Who Is Martyr Salah?

According to the initial data known on the martyr, he was born into a humble family in Cairo’s Ain Shams region. His father worked as a driver, and he has two brothers. Martyr Mohammad joined the military last year and was supposed to serve for three years as a police officer in the Central Security Forces, particularly at point 47 on the international border, where there are also police officers armed with light weapons, as stipulated by the “Camp David Accords.” His most recent visit to his family was in the middle of last month.

هذا #محمد_صلاح (22 عاما) من عين شمس في القاهرة منفذ عملية الحدود المصرية الفلسطينية ،هذا الذي حاولوا إخفاء اسمه وصورته، قتل 3 من جنود الاحتلال الإسرائيلي، وكان يحمل معه أثناء القتال مصحفاً إلى جانب السكين والبندقية.#فخر_العرب pic.twitter.com/vSx53PBV6J

— رضوان الأخرس (@rdooan) June 5, 2023

Ongoing Investigations

The investigations, led by Military Intelligence and including National Security and several sectors involved in the incident, emerged with an official scenario, compatible with the statement published immediately by the Armed Forces.

As the priority focused on the necessity to conclude the case as soon as possible and to address all concerns linked to it internally, commands were issued to arrest personnel in the Ministry of Interior who were involved in the incident. The decision required that they be referred to the investigation immediately and informed of retirement in the next action of the ministry, which would witness changes on a large scale in this region.

Furthermore, preliminary investigations condemned the officials in charge of nominating the soldier to deploy in this region for failing to check his Facebook profile, where he put words in support of Palestinians facing ‘Israel’. According to the investigators, this type of post, which was made around a year before he joined the army, “necessitated” his evacuation from this region.

The Egyptian Version of the Incident

Egypt prepared a scenario for the incident, which will be released in the following days as the official version. The operation’s title assures that it was not intended to target Israeli troops at the border, but rather a transient incident related to the soldier’s pursuit of smugglers after witnessing them during his duty days. It also ensures that Salah’s mistake was to continue chasing beyond Egyptian borders.

According to this scenario, Salah pursued the smugglers and attempted to clash with them, while the exchange of fire with the Israeli soldiers occurred while he was attempting to defend himself, and as a result of a lack of coordination and prior knowledge of his presence in this area and his border crossing.

The Egyptian corridors of power emphasized the need of reviewing the instructions provided to the soldiers deployed in this region over the next several days. Meanwhile, the coordination procedure between the Egyptian and Israeli sides accelerated the transportation of the corpse of the martyr, whose remarkable operation at the border prompted the Israelis to prioritize revising the standards of follow-up and surveillance on the border strip.

* Al-Akhbar daily published this article on Monday (June 5), two days after the Egypt border attack.

Al-Manar made few edits on the English version.

Source: Al-Akhbar Newspaper