The Eel

On the night of Jan. 25, phones began ringing in Cairo newsrooms. It was Ahmed Hussein, the "Socialist Party" leader, said the voice. He was deathly sick, lying on a bed of pain, and he wanted to be sure the papers reported it. The next afternoon the phones rang again. At that very moment Cairo lay enshrouded in smoke and echoing to sirens as a feverish anti-foreign mob, directed by jeep-borne leaders on a precise timetable, fired $300 million worth of foreign property and took some 60 lives (TIME, Feb. 11). It was Ahmed again. He was still in bed, terribly sick, and wasn't it awful what was happening?

This week 17 tough Cairo cops hustled Ahmed,' a stocky man with bushy eyebrows and an arrogant stance, into the prisoner's dock in Egypt's Supreme Military Court, and he was put on trial for his life. The charge: Hussein, careering around in a black Citroen, had directed the mob in "burning, sabotaging, looting and destroying."

Not so, explained Ahmed with a pained expression. At the height of the riot he was safe in jail, under an 18-month sentence for committing lese majese against King Farouk. The police stonily reminded Ahmed that he had not been put in jail until that evening, after the rioting was over.

Ahmed Hussein was in the tightest squeeze of his nimble life, but in his 42 years Hussein had slipped eellike out of nets before. When Hitler stood high, Hussein was a fascist, founder of the Green Shirts, and did not seem to lack for money. His followers chanted "Come, Rommel. Come, Rommel." He was locked up as a dangerous subversive, but one day he slipped out of jail and out of sight.

When he reappeared, the Arab world was aflame against Israel, and Ahmed became a big-time organizer of irregular anti-Jewish units. As that failed, he took on a new role: a socialist with a passion for land reform. "A pact with Russia," he cried, "has become an absolute necessity." He became an executive in the Communist "peace" movement, and soon had enough money to start a few newspapers. Meanwhile, he protected his right wing by striking up a friendship with Wafd Party Secretary General Fuad Serag el Din.

This week, in the heavily guarded prisoner's dock, Ahmed's prospects looked a little bleak. The government wanted to make an example of the rioters who had driven away foreign businessmen and almost ruined Cairo. But no one was selling Hussein short. He knew a lot of important people and he knew a lot about them.

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