Police identify four plotters in Cairo bombing that killed three CAIRO, Egypt Egypt's Interior Ministry on Sunday identified four men it accused of training a bomber who killed himself and three tourists here on Apr. 7. A ministry statement said the teenage bomber, Hassan Rafaat Ahmed Bashandi, "was affiliated with an extremist group that included four members" who trained and recruited him. Three of the suspects are in custody. A fourth remains at large, the ministry said. The group also prepared the explosives that detonated near the Khan el-Khalili bazaar, a historic part of Cairo popular with tourists. Bashandi, who was 17 or 18 years old, was attempting to plant the bomb _ a concoction of TNT placed in a nail-filled leather bag _ when it exploded prematurely, killing himself, an American and two French tourists. It was unclear when the three suspects were arrested. Last week, an investigator said Bashandi was aided by three others, but didn't elaborate. Police arrested 30 people after identifying the bomber, including his mother and 19 relatives. His mother has since been released. The government said from the outset that the blast was the act of an individual or a small group, anxious to limit the damage of such an attack on Egypt's tourism industry. The Interior Ministry said Bashandi was a student who became a religious extremist after his father's death. Sunday's statement, based on the detainees' confessions and investigations, said the attack was planned for and financed by Akram Mohammed Fawzi, born in 1970, who owned a marble workshop and lived in el-Moqattam, on Cairo's eastern edge. Fawzi incited the group with "jihadist ideas" and urged them to "carry out terrorist acts in reaction to developments in Iraq and Palestine," the statement said. The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and continued violence in the Palestinian territories have enraged many Egyptians and others in the Arab world. The government said the attackers in last year's bombing in Sinai, which killed 34 people, were inspired by the same events. Fawzi also persuaded the group to set up a fertilizer factory in southern Egypt that was used to cloak their finances and bomb-making preparations, the statement said. The ministry said Fawzi trained his recruits through CDs containing Internet data on bomb-making and holy war. Some CDs were found in Bashandi's house. The statement identified Tarek Ahmed Al-Sayed, a neighbor of Bashandi born in 1971, as the bombmaker. Al-Sayed owned a computer lab in the impoverished Cairo neighborhood of Shoubra el-Kheima. Authorities said another neighbor, Reda Sayed Ahmed, born in 1986, was prevented from planting the bomb because he was recovering from surgery. Ahmed recommended Bashandi for the task, the statement said. The fourth suspect, still at large, was identified as Ashraf Saied Youssef, also a resident of Shoubra el-Kheima. Youssef, born in 1978, told Bashandi that the device would explode five minutes after it was triggered, and even agreed with him on a meeting point after the blast, the statement said. During the 1990s, Islamic insurgents mounted several attacks on tourists in a bid to cripple the tourism industry and bring down the government. The last terrorist attack in Cairo was in September 1997, when gunmen attacked a bus of German tourists, killing 11. Two months later Islamic insurgents killed 58 tourists at a pharaonic temple in the southern city of Luxor, the last major attack of the 1990s insurgency. str-sd-jk 050417 160344 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! 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