Hamas assails Egypt over Palestinian's jail death

GAZA (Reuters) - Hamas accused Egypt Tuesday of torturing to death a member of the Palestinian Islamist faction who had been held in one of its jails, a charge that could sour Cairo's mediation of Middle East reconciliation deals.

Egypt is trying to heal rifts between Hamas and its rival Palestinian faction Fatah, and broker a Hamas-Israel prisoner swap. But it is also wary of Hamas's rule over the neighboring Gaza Strip and its allure among Egypt's Islamist opposition.

Youssef Abu Zuhri, the brother and bodyguard of a senior Hamas spokesman, was arrested on April 28 after crossing into the Egyptian Sinai from the Gaza Strip and was tortured while in custody of the security services, the faction said.

"They wanted to get information from him to convict me. Certainly he had nothing to say because there was nothing to tell," the spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri told reporters.

"In one brief telephone call to me, he told me he had lost his sight," Abu Zuhri said, fighting back tears. "'Save me,' were his last words."

Egyptian security sources denied the torture allegation. They said Abu Zuhri, 38, died Monday from liver and chest ailments and that his body would be returned to his family in the Gaza Strip.

Another Hamas spokesman, Fawzi Barhoum, said Youssef Abu Zuhri had died of internal bleeding.

"We asked Egyptian officials to intervene to save his life. We asked them to send him to a hospital," Barhoum said. "We condemn this murder. He was tortured to death."

BORDER BLOCKADE

Neither side offered further details on the circumstances of Abu Zuhri's arrest. Israel Radio said he had entered the Sinai using one of the tunnels that Palestinian commercial smugglers and gunrunners use to circumvent Egypt's border clampdowns.

The first Arab country to make peace with Israel, Egypt supports an Israeli blockade on Gaza that has been stepped up since Hamas wrested control of the territory from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah in 2007.

Egyptian security forces have been especially vigilant in the Sinai since hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, chafing at the embargo, stormed across the border in January 2008 in search of goods.

On April 8, Egypt accused Hezbollah, a Lebanese guerrilla group that shares Hamas's enmity to the Jewish state, of running a cell in Sinai. Hezbollah acknowledged sending an agent there in an effort to supply weapons to Hamas in Gaza.

Barhoum said Egypt continued to hold several Hamas prisoners, including Ayman Nofal, a military commander arrested for crossing illegally into the Sinai last year. Barhoum urged their release.

(Additional reporting by Mariam Karouny in Cairo; Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Dominic Evans)