Ammon News - Chief of the ruling military council Hussain Tantawi and his deputy Samy Anan led the mourners in the funeral.

AMMONNEWS - Egypt's military rulers on Friday attended a funeral for Khalid, the eldest son of late Egyptian president Jamal Abdul Nasser in Cairo. Khalid died at a Cairo hospital Thursday night after a fight with ilnness. He was 62.

Chief of the ruling military council Hussain Tantawi and his deputy Samy Anan led the mourners in the funeral after they performed special prayers in a mosque named after Jamal Abdul Nasser in the Cairo area of Qubri Al Quba. Tantawi offered condolences to Khalid's son and his two brothers.

Dozens of ordinary Egyptians and politicians, including potential presidential contenders, attended the funeral.

Khalid was taken to a hospital in Cairo two weeks ago suffering from complications of surgery in the digestive system he had undergone months earlier in London.

An engineering university professor, Khalid did not dabble in politics despite his father's wide popularity as an iconic politician. Nasser, who ruled Egypt from 1954 to 1970, is known as a champion of Arab nationalism.

Khalid, the eldest among Nasser's five children, was quoted by the semi-official newspaper Al Ahram in an obituary as saying: "My father used to warn me if I ever abused his name, he would put me in the military prison."

Political parties paid tribute to Khalid, describing him as a devoted Egyptian. "He died after he had fulfilled his mission as a member of the Egyptian national movement. He was a qualified, respectable university professor," said the Reform and Development Party, a nascent political party, in a statement on Friday.

It urged Egypt's ruling military council to declare three-day mourning to commemorate his deah.

Khalid left Egypt in the late 1980s for London and Belgrade shortly after he was accused of involvement in a group set up allegedy to kill Israeli diplomats in Egypt. He was sentenced to death, but was acquitted in a retrial, a matter that encouraged him to return to Egypt.


* GulfNews