Past leader of chorus turns to terror

SHUBRA EL-KHEIMA, Egypt -- Once the cheerful leader of a school singing group, Ehab Yousri Yassin underwent a drastic change a few years ago, mingling with Islamic extremists, talking only about religion, and forcing his sisters to wear head-to-toe veils, say residents of this impoverished city on Cairo's northern outskirts.

The residents provided insights into the 24-year-old's life yesterday, a day after security officials said he blew himself up while jumping from a bridge in central Cairo during a police chase.

The explosion killed Yassin -- suspected of helping plan an April 7 suicide bombing in a crowded Cairo bazaar -- and injured seven others.

Less than two hours later, police say, one of Yassin's sisters and his fiancée, enraged by his death, opened fire on a tourist bus carrying Austrians before killing themselves. The tourists escaped injury, but two Egyptians in the area were wounded.

Police cracked down hard, arresting 200 people in massive security sweeps Saturday and yesterday in two areas just north of Cairo, including the neighborhood in Shubra el-Kheima where Yassin and his sisters grew up.

Yassin's friends and relatives were held for questioning in Saturday's violence and suspected connections to terror networks.

Police played down the attacks as the work of amateurish militants, but political opposition groups and security experts blamed Egypt's controversial decades-old emergency laws, saying they created an oppressive environment that breeds violence and such extremists as Yassin.

Yassin grew up in the crowded streets of Ezbet al-Gabalawi, a Shubra el-Kheima district. People said he was a polite and happy leader of a school singing group before adopting hard-line Islamic views about four years ago.

''He forced his sisters to wear the Islamic veil and had gone too far into Islamic extremism," said one of Yassin's friends, Tamer Sayyed. ''Yassin started to quarrel with his father and criticize others for subjects they used to talk about, instead of speaking about Islam. That made his friends decide to distance themselves."

Muna Rashad, a pharmacist who worked for 16 years close to the apartment building in which Yassin's family lived, said her initial surprise at hearing the news faded when she recalled how Yassin and his sisters had changed.

''[Yassin] was good, smiling, and behaved well when he used to come to buy medicine and talk to me, but he changed later when he used to mingle with Islamic fundamentalists coming to visit him from the other neighborhood," Rashad said.

Asked why Yassin turned to extremism, Rashad blamed the death of his mother a few years ago and the city's poverty. ''Poverty kills the brain," she added.

Yassin and fugitives Ashraf Saeed Youssef, 27, and Gamal Ahmed Abdel Aal, 35, were sought for planning the April 7 suicide bombing that killed two French tourists and an American.

Police said they captured Youssef and Abdel Aal on Saturday before chasing Yassin onto a highway overpass, where he jumped off, detonating the bomb that injured seven people, including an Israeli couple, a Swedish man, and his Italian girlfriend.

Soon after, police said, Yassin's sister, Negat Yassin, and fiancèe, Iman Ibrahim Khamis, shot at a bus carrying tourists near the historic Citadel site in retaliation for Yassin's death.

Yassin's sister then shot and fatally wounded her companion before killing herself, police said.

At the shooting scene, bystanders said police killed at least one of the women, conflicting with accounts they committed suicide. Many were shocked by the involvement of women, who are not known to have carried out past attacks in Egypt.