CAIRO — A real estate mogul and member of the Egyptian parliament was arrested Tuesday in the slaying of a troubled Lebanese diva, a tale that has fascinated the Arab media with its plot twists, whiffs of revenge and lurid glimpses into the echelons of celebrity and power.
Hisham Talaat Mustafa, a member of President Hosni Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party, is accused of ordering the killing of his former lover Suzanne Tamim, according to the Egyptian prosecutor's office. The singer was found in her Dubai apartment in July with her throat slit and multiple stab wounds.
The investigation led to former Egyptian police officer Mohsen Sukkari, a security guard at the Four Seasons hotel in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheik. Mustafa's real estate group built the hotel and Sukkari told police that the developer paid him $2 million to travel to the United Arab Emirates and kill Tamim, according to Egyptian prosecutor Abdel Meguid Mahmoud.
The arrest of such a high-profile politician was unusual in Egypt.
The 49-year-old Mustafa "took part through incitement, agreement and assistance with the first defendant [Sukkari] in killing the victim in revenge," the prosecutor said. "He provided him with special information and amounts of money."
Mustafa and Sukkari will face criminal hearings in Cairo. It was unclear whether they would be extradited to the UAE on additional charges.
Indications that Mustafa was allegedly involved in the case intensified two weeks ago when the government of Egypt forbade the nation's media to report on the story. Mustafa runs one of the country's largest development firms, Talaat Mustafa Group, and is a member of the upper house of parliament with ties to the Mubarak family. Mustafa had complained that the negative publicity was hurting the Egyptian economy by triggering a steep decline in his company's stock.
The case in Egypt was as much a murder mystery as it was a morality tale about the rising power of businesspeople in the ruling political machine. The National Democratic Party is known for widespread corruption, and Egyptians have grown accustomed to party officials escaping prosecution for financial and other crimes. In July, outrage broke out across the country when a Mubarak appointee to parliament was acquitted in the deaths of more than 1,000 people in the 2006 sinking in the Red Sea of a shoddily maintained ferry he owned.
