The body of Egyptian engineer Sami Mahmoud Barakat who was killed in South Nigeria last Thursday arrived yesterday in Cairo.
Barakat had been working as head of a project to construct a road in South Nigeria and was shot dead after gunmen blocked the road and killed him, also shooting his bodyguards and the driver.
The victim’s relatives and neighbors gathered at Cairo Airport and expressed their resentment at the delay in receiving the body, which had taken three days to arrive. Although the body had been scheduled to arrive on French airlines the day before yesterday, relatives were surprised to find that only the person accompanying the body had arrived, without the body itself, due to mistakes in papers and shipping operations that forced French authorities to keep the body at Paris Airport.
Jehan Abdel Moneim, Barakat’s widow, said the last phone call received from Barakat was last Wednesday, a day before he died. In his call Barakat described the situation as bad, saying that murder was rampant and gangs were shooting at the army everywhere, according to Abdel Moneim. He also said he couldn’t work in such a situation and was planning to return to Cairo within days.
Attorney General Abdel Meguid Mahmoud ordered a team from Nozha’s prosecution office to examine the body, papers and reports to clarify the cause of death.
Translated from the Arabic Edition.
