Word: farouk
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Midnight in Cairo on the last day of August. In the Revolutionary Command Council headquarters in ex-King Farouk's old pleasure house on the Nile, a phone rings. A big man with grizzled hair answers...
Egypt was neutral, but young Farouk was suspected of intriguing with the Axis. At a critical moment in 1942 when Rommel was only 40 miles from the delta, the British, fearing treachery in their rear, surrounded the Abdin Palace in Cairo, and a tough British ambassador presented Farouk with an ultimatum: put the pro-Allied Wafd in power or be exiled. Farouk signed the order, smiling: "You will live to regret this...
...terrorist organization. But none was so humiliated and infuriated by the Abdin Palace incident as Gamal Nasser and his proud young friends. At the Officers' Club in Cairo a committee was formed, the first step in the Free Officers' Movement which ten years later was to sweep Farouk and all his works out of Egypt...
...strength to make an armistice in 1949, Moslem resentment smoldered, later flamed up. "Liberation guerrillas" attacked the British, by then withdrawn to the Suez Canal zone. Then they cut loose in Cairo, where they burned bars, restaurants, movie houses (all sinful in Moslem eyes) and hotels frequented by foreigners. Farouk's wobbly government began to cave in and a state of emergency was declared...
...time had come for the Free Officers to act. "The original plan," says Nasser, "was to kill Farouk and all his stooges in the palace. We had 15 groups of three officers each to do the killings. But we decided the plot was too complicated, and we called it off at the last moment. If we failed to kill the King, the country would be hurt. If we succeeded, what then? Chaos?" A few days later they learned that there was to be a cleanup of officers. "We knew that they had our names." A plan was decided upon...