Tried for Treason

In his 57 years, Ibrahim Abdel Hady had risen far, from peasant beginnings to a palace in Cairo and the eminence of Premier of Egypt (1948). One of the nation's best lawyers and orators, a powerful politician, he was also irreproachably nationalist: he had once been jailed for life by the hated British.

But he had made one mistake, and last week it hung around his neck like a noose. On becoming Premier, he cracked down hard on the fanatic Moslem Brotherhood, whom he blamed for the murders of his two predecessors in office. He flung hundreds into jail, where they were tortured (some had their nails pulled out) to extort confessions. He even showed up at some interrogations himself, slapping suspects' faces, spitting at them.

On May 25, 1949, he picked on the wrong victim. To a 31-year-old major just back from the disastrous Palestine war, he said: "Young man, you've been seen going into their headquarters. You've been giving the Brotherhood military training. Come clean with me." The soft-spoken major denied the accusations, though, as he later admitted, "I had a paper in my wallet which would have proven my guilt." At the first chance, the young officer excused himself, went to the toilet, flushed the paper away, and returned. Unable to prove anything against the major, Hady told him, "You're a young fool," but he finally let him go.

Six Crimes. The major was Gamal Abdel Nasser, now the brains and driving force behind Egypt's ruling revolutionary government. Last week, nervous and shaking, grey-haired Ibrahim Abdel Hady stood before the extraordinary Revolutionary Tribunal charged with six crimes: conspiring with a foreign power against the regime, treason, corruption, graft, terrorism, complicity in murder. His was the first trial under the new tribunal.

The ex-Premier seemed in a daze, and sat gazing numbly, occasionally lighting a cigarette. He spoke once in sentences that trembled past his lips: "I am sure of my innocence. A man devoted his whole life to serve his country and yet he is charged with treason. I leave my fate in your hands. If ending Abdel Hady's life is in the interests of Egypt, let it end. I am still the Egyptian youth who served his country."

Forty-Eight Acres. At 10 the third morning, Abdel Hady, standing motionless before the court-martial, heard his fate: death by hanging; confiscation of his $900,000 fortune, except for the 48 acres of land he inherited from his father. Two days later, with a great show of magnanimity, President Naguib's twelve-man Revolutionary Command Council commuted Hady's sentence to life in prison.

Still awaiting trial are at least 32 more Egyptians, including the once powerful Premier Mustafa el Nahas, and Hafez Afifi, onetime chief of Farouk's royal cabinet. The military rulers had apparently decided that if they are to give Egypt the stability that Kemal Ataturk gave Turkey (see p. 58), they must deal as sternly as he did with the opposition.

Gamal Nasser, the "young major," has made a thorough study of Ataturk's life.

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