After the Mysterious Death of Alaa Al-Siddiq, Has London Become the Center of “Dissidents’ Mysterious Death”?
Arab popular and international human rights organizations are waiting for the results of the investigation into the death of Emirati activist Alaa Al-Siddiq, following a "suspicious" traffic accident on June 20, 2021, on a street in the British capital, London.
Many argue that the incident was "planned", especially that "Al-Siddiq" is a human rights activist opposing the regime in the Emirates, as a result of the violations it practises against citizens, including her father, Muhammad Al-Siddiq Al-Obaidli.
Al-Siddiq was residing in London, after obtaining political asylum. With her death in London, many fear that Al-Siddiq will join the list of victims whose cases have been closed, and put in the British police records as ‘anonymously done’.
Center of ‘Mysterious Death’
London was infamous for being the capital of political assassinations, as a number of opponents and activists were killed there, while the incidents of their assassination remained a "mystery", and the authorities did not reveal their "real" details.
The past decades have witnessed a number of assassinations of political dissidents, most notably of them was the Palestinian cartoonist, Naji Al-Ali, known as "Handala". He was attacked by shooting on July 22, 1987, west of London where he died.
With his drawings, Al-Ali criticized the Palestinian reality and the Arab regimes at that period. He received death threats before he was assassinated, and "his case is being neglected until these days."
Fingers were pointed at the Mossad, when "Al-Ali" opposed the Israeli occupation, while others accused Arab regimes of being behind his killing.
Years before that, specifically on January 4, 1978, the first representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization in London, Saeed Hamami, was assassinated in his office by bullets fired at him. Hamami was active in London with his press articles, media and political interviews, and was known for his public speeches on various platforms, including the famous Hyde Park.
Hamami's bold speeches had a significant impact on the internationalization of the Palestinian cause and its placement on the agenda of global events, in a way that confused diplomatic plans and the Israeli propaganda machine that portrayed Arabs and Palestinians as advocates of war and rejecting peace, according to the Palestinian News Agency (Wafa).
Throwing from the Balcony
The method of assassination was not limited to shooting bullets at the victims, but it varied in some cases like throwing from the balcony and taking out the incident as a “suicide case”. This was common in London, and happened to a number of prominent opponents and politicians, including the politician and the Egyptian businessman Ashraf Marwan, husband of Mona Gamal Abdel Nasser, daughter of the former president.
On June 27, 2007, unknown persons threw Marwan from the balcony of his house in London. A witness stated that the incident was not a suicide. He saw Marwan fly from the balcony horizontally for two seconds, before falling to the ground and obscured by high trees, indicating that he was pushed hard from the balcony of the house and did not throw himself as if it was a suicide accident.
In addition, Mona Gamal gave a statement in which she said that her husband "was assassinated, as two men infiltrated the apartment, and their Japanese neighbor heard him screaming, before he was thrown from the balcony of the house." Despite this, the police announced that the British judiciary "confirmed the man's suicide and denied the existence of a suspicion of assassination or premeditated murder."
In the same way, the Egyptian artist Souad Hosni was killed by throwing her from the balcony of her house on the sixth floor of the "Stuart Tower" building on June 21, 2001, while the British police did not reveal who was involved in her killing.
At a time when the British report did not prove that she "died murdered so far", Soad Hosni's family confirmed that "she was killed and did not commit suicide", and that a blow to the back of her head "was clearly visible", although this information was not included in the British medical report as well as the Egyptian .
The Egyptian artist Samir Sabry had also referred to this matter in an interview with Amr El-Leithi on the "One of the People'' program on the Egyptian "Al-Hayat" Channel, on January 15, 2021. Doubts revolve around the involvement of “Safwat al-Sharif,” the former intelligence officer and information minister during the era of the late President Hosni Mubarak, after Soad Hosni threatened to write her memoirs and include information that revealed many secrets about Safwat al-Sharif and many men during the era of the late President Gamal Abdel Nasser.Her death is stillsubject to speculation, despite "there are indications that she was liquidated and not committed suicide."
In the same place where Souad was killed, the founder of the Egyptian Republican Guard, Muhammad al-Laithi Nassef, was found dead, but it was said that he fell from the tenth floor of the "Sitwart Tower" building in an apartment belonging to the Egyptian presidency in London on August 24, 1973.
Investigations conducted by the British detectives concluded that "Nasef" died as a result of feeling dizzy, and that what led to his fall in this way was that he was tall, and therefore it was easy to fall from the balcony.
Although the investigations ended with the result presented by the British security, Nassef's family and friends were not convinced by that result, stressing that what happened to the victim was a "planned assassination."
Suitable Scene
In turn, the Libyan intelligence found Britain a suitable scene to carry out assassinations and liquidate political opponents. In November 1995, the opposition Ali Muhammad Abu Zaid was assassinated in his shop in central London, because of his primary role in the Bab al-Aziziya operation in 1948, where he led a group of revolutionaries. It was a popular movement that wanted to assassinate the leader, Muammar Gaddafi.
The Libyan intelligence services also carried out a liquidation operation for the opposition broadcaster Muhammad Mustafa Ramadan on April 11, 1980, as well as the opposition lawyer Mahmoud Abdel Salam Nafeh in London on April 25 of the same year.
Among the political opponents who were assassinated in Britain, the Syrian opposition figure, Abdul Hadi Arwani, who was found dead in his car on the streets of Wembley in the "Green Hill" area known as a densely populated west of London, after he was shot on April 7, 2015.
Arwani had left Syria as a young man in 1982, after surviving the Hama massacre, and was the most prominent person who participated in the 2012 demonstration against the regime of Bashar al-Assad in front of the Damascus embassy in London.
The newspaper "The Daily Mail", quoting a source in the British police, reported that the killing of the dissident and former imam in a London mosque, Arwani indicated that it was a state-backed assassination", before the police accused another person of his killing saying that it was because a "personal dispute". ".
He also joined the list of victims of the political assassination in Britain, the Pakistani political leader Imran Farooq, who was assassinated in September 2010, by stabbing north of London.
