Day in Court

Just about everything was there but a brass band. Military police in crisp red caps lined the road to the former royal villa on the edge of Gezira Island in the middle of the Nile in Cairo. One by one, twelve cars drew up to the door, and out of each stepped a neatly dressed civilian or high-ranking military officer, accompanied by a second officer and two soldiers. Inside the yellow stone villa, television cameras whirred and flashbulbs popped as the twelve men nodded quietly to friends and relatives, occasionally stopping to shake hands. Thus last week President Gamal Abdel Nasser opened his show trial of the first of 54 former government and military leaders charged with plotting his overthrow in the wake of last June's Arab-Israeli war.

Offer of Refuge. The accused ringleader of the plot, former Vice President and commander of the armed forces, Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer, had already paid his debt: shortly after his arrest last fall, Radio Cairo announced that he had poisoned himself, a report received with great skepticism. The twelve in court last week were accused of being Amer's main conspirators. Among them: Shams Badran, Minister of War during the conflict with Israel; Abbas Radwan, former Minister of the Interior; Salah Nasr, former chief of Nasser's intelligence service; and Galal Haridi, who had commanded Nasser's elite so-called "storm troops."

The alleged plotting began after Nasser, casting around for a scapegoat for his humiliating defeat, put the blame on his army and sacked 800 officers, including Amer. Holing up in his villa in the fashionable Cairo suburb of Giza, said the prosecution, Amer offered refuge to other similarly displaced officers, and more than 50 moved in. With them they brought seven truckloads of grenades, pistols, machine guns and ammunition. At one point, when government security forces tried to intercept Haridi as he went out for cigarettes, guards at the windows and doors opened up with guns, wounding two soldiers.

With his key lieutenants, the prosecutor claimed, Amer began mailing out anti-Nasser pamphlets and plotting his next move. Among several plans discussed was one wild scheme for jumping Nasser outside his home, popping him into a sack and driving off with him. The final plan, as described by the prosecutor, called for Amer and his men to seize command of the armed forces, arrest a number of top officials, including all cabinet members, and take control of the government. For the necessary payoffs, the government claims that Nasr gave $140,000 to Radwan.

Nasser got wind of the plot, however, and ordered Amer and his fellow officers arrested. When the army men prepared to fight rather than go peacefully, Radwan--up to then still unidentified as a conspirator--visited the villa and persuaded them to give up. Though last week's first twelve defendants pleaded not guilty, the trial's final verdict, which may not come for weeks, is practically a foregone conclusion. Two of the three judges are loyal Nasser generals; the third--appointed court chairman--is one of Nasser's vice presidents, Hussein el Shafei.

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