Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Tuesday began a reshuffle of the military and police forces by naming high-ranking officers to top civilian posts in remote governorates, said AFP and local press.
Air Defense Forces Commander Mohammed Al Shahhat, Deputy Defense Minister Ahmed Medhat Abdel Rahman, and the commander of Egypt's northern military zone, General Al Dessuqi Al Banna were given new postings, according to a presidential decree.
Shahhat, who is considered close to the president and the number three in the Egyptian armed forces, was named governor of Marsa Matruh on the western Mediterranean coast, it said.
Abdel Rahman was appointed governor of the New Valley in the southwestern desert, which includes the massive Toshka irrigation project, and Banna was given a top civilian post in the southern tourist city of Luxor.
Meanwhile, General Samir Yussef, who works in military intelligence, was named governor of the deep southern governorship of Aswan, according to a copy of the decree cited by AFP and Al Gomhuria Arabic daily.
Lieutenant General Mohammad Dassoui was appointed as head of Luxor’s higher council. The tourist city was once a stage for terrorist attacks that killed scores of tourists and locals before a government crackdown on militants brought a halt to such violent acts, which were meant to destabilize the government by harming the tourism industry.
According to the agency, there were no indications of who would fill their positions nor of the motives for the changes which were carried out by Mubarak, who was also once a commander of the Egyptian air force.
Mubarak also named two top officials in the interior ministry, which runs the police and security forces, to similar positions, according to the decree.
A deputy interior minister for administrative affairs, General Ahmed Said Sawwan, was named governor of Daquahliya governorate in the Nile Delta, while General Mamduh Kedwani, a deputy interior minister for transportation and traffic, was named governor of the southern Sohag governorate.
Kedwani has held several top interior ministry postings, especially in the early 1990s when he was head of state security services for the city of Asyut, at a time when the area was a stronghold for Islamic militants.
Three civilians were also named to regional postings.
The director of the Egyptian center for agricultural research, Saad Nasser, was named governor of Fayum, just south of Cairo, and Hamed Shatla, head of the faculty of medicine at Ain Shams University in Cairo, was named governor of Sharquiya in the Nile Delta.
The chief judge of the Cairo appeals court, Ali Abdel Shakur, was named governor of Kafr Al Sheikh in the Nile Delta.
Abdel Shakur on June 20 referred media owner Mamduh Mahran to a state security court after his paper published an account of an alleged sex scandal involving an ex-monk, sparking riots among the country's Coptic Christian minority, said AFP.
Mubarak is due to meet with the new appointees on Wednesday, according to the daily, which added that the top officials will be tasked with “handling mass problems in the field, bypassing routine office work…and working for the development of local resources for each governorate.” – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
