Wrong man held in hunt for Al Qaeda boss

CAIRO // When police detained an Egyptian Islamist as he stepped off his flight from Pakistan yesterday, word spread that Al Qaeda's second-in-command with a multi-million-dollar bounty on his head, was finally in custody.

But it turned out that suspicions that Mohamed Ibrahim Makkawi was Saif Al Adel, an Al Qaeda commander also known by the alias Mohamed Ibrahim Makkawi, were incorrect. Mr Makkawi, a former Egyptian army officer with ties to Islamic extremists in Egypt and Afghanistan, said it was a case of mistaken identity.

After the confusion was cleared up, Mr Makkawi was arrested by Egyptian authorities on charges of being a part of extremist movements that sought to overthrow the Egyptian government in the 1990s through violence.

He said he planned to prove his innocence and that he severed his connections to extremism more than two decades ago.

*With additional reports from the Associated Press

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