CAIRO - Azerbaijan, Malaysia, Sudan and South Africa have in the past few months extradited several wanted Islamists to Egypt, a London-based Islamist Yasser al-Serri said Sunday.

Malaysia has delivered to Egypt four or five Islamists, including Mohamed Abdel Ghafar, who once lived in Bosnia and who travelled to Malaysia six months ago to trade in electrical appliances, Serri told AFP by telephone.

Serri could not say whether Abdel Ghafar belonged to a specific group, nor give any details about the three or four others that Kuala Lumpur extradited. He named one of the other extradited Islamists as Hani Heikal.

Serri, who heads the Islamic Observation Center, which informs the media about the arrests of Islamists worldwide, said Sudan also extradited Islamist Mohamed Yussef Abdel Rahman (also known as Abu Ahmed), but would not give more details.

He added that South Africa and Azerbaijan each extradited an Islamist, but gave no details.

It was not immediately possible to confirm the extraditions with Egyptian officials.

Cooperation

An Islamist here, who asked not to be named, said "these Islamists had lived for a while in Afghanistan." The source could not say if the Islamists had ties with Al-Qaeda, the Islamic militant group of Osama bin Laden.

Serri, for his part, said: "These extraditions come in the framework of cooperation between Egyptian intelligence and intelligence services in other countries."

Serri arrived in London in 1994 to seek political asylum, shortly after an Egyptian court sentenced him to death in absentia over the attempted assassination of then prime minister Atef Sedqi. - AFP