Palestinian Student, Al-Mu'tasem Bellah Ali Nouh, Detained in Egypt Over Inventing New Communication Technology

Published yesterday (updated) 22/01/2011 10:10

EL-ARISH, Egypt (Ma'an) --

Egyptian police are holding a Palestinian student accused of inventing a hi-tech telecommunication network for use by Palestinian organizations, Egyptian security sources said.

Al-Mu'tasem Bellah Ali Nouh worked with other Palestinians to create the device which could bypass Egypt's communication network, security officials said, adding that he operated the network from Rafah, close to the Gaza border.

According to the officials, Nouh was arrested in August in a raid on his apartment. He was enrolled in the engineering faculty of Misr University for Science and Technology.

Nouh admitted that Palestinian organizations had used the network to contact their leaders in Arab and European countries, security sources said.

Egyptian officials said Nouh traveled to Egypt in 2002, and spent eight years inventing the communications network which could send and receive invisible data. The invention allowed telephone calls to be made to any phone in the world, without being connected to the internet.

Further, security sources said that although the calls were made from Egypt, they could appear as if they originated from any telephone number in the world. Nouh could make telephone calls from the private numbers of citizens and notable figures without their knowledge, the sources said.

Egyptian security said they seized the device and have presented it to engineers to examine.

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