Shams Badran

Shams Badran
Minister of War
In office
10 September 1966 – 10 June 1967
PresidentGamal Abdel Nasser
Preceded byAbdel Wahab Al Bishri
Succeeded by
Personal details
Born(1929-04-19)19 April 1929
Giza, Kingdom of Egypt
Died28 November 2020(2020-11-28) (aged 91)
Plymouth, United Kingdom
Alma materMilitary academy

Shams Al Din Badran (Arabic: شمس الدين بدران; 19 April 1929 – 28 November 2020) was an Egyptian government official. He served as minister of war of Egypt during Gamal Abdel Nasser's era and the Six-Day War of 1967. He was removed from his post during the war and later imprisoned. After his release he married a British woman and lived in "self-imposed exile" in the United Kingdom.

Early life and education

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Badran was born on 19 April 1929.[1][2] After high school, he attended a military academy and graduated in 1948 as a junior officer[1] and almost immediately dispatched to the 1947–1949 Palestine war, where he was besieged by Zionist militias along with Gamal Abdel Nasser in Al-Faluja, for which he earned a Gold Medal of Merit from Farouk of Egypt.[2] Badran was later sent to France for a one-year training on a military scholarship.[2]

Career and activities

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Badran was the head of Egypt's military security services in the mid-1960s.[3] He also served as the office manager of Field Marshal Abdul Hakim Amer under Gamal Abdel Nasser's presidency.[4] Badran was one of the top aides of Amer.[5] The Muslim Brotherhood accused him and Amer of responsibility for the torture of Brotherhood leaders who had been arrested due to their alleged plans to assassinate Nasser in 1965.[6][7]

Badran was appointed minister of war on 10 September 1966, a few months before the Six-Day War in June 1967, replacing Abdel Wahab Al Bishri in the post.[1][8] Amer had supported Badran's appointment.[9] Badran was also named as the chief of Nasser's cabinet the same year.[10] Badran met with the Fatah members in the late 1966.[11] They asked to create a Fatah base in the Negev desert which would be backed by the Egypt's logistical help to attack the Israeli army.[11] However, Badran did not take their plan seriously.[11] On 25 May 1967, Badran visited Moscow and met senior Soviet officials, including Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin, to secure their support regarding a perceived Israeli threat.[5] Badran resigned from office on 10 June 1967, during the Six-Day War, and was replaced by Abdel Wahab Al Bishri, interim minister of war.[8][12] Amin Howeidi was named as the minister of war on 22 July 1967.[8]

Following the defeat of the Egypt in the Six-Day War Badran was considered as a successor to the President Gamal Abdel Nasser.[13]

Conviction and later years

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Badran along with other senior officials, including Amer, was detained on 25 August 1967 on charges of plotting against Nasser.[14][15] However, they were tried for their roles during the six day war in 1967, including for Badran charges of torturing members of the Muslim Brotherhood.[16][17] Badran appeared in court in two separate trials.[16] He and Salah Nasr, former chief of intelligence and also part of Amer's faction, were convicted and sentenced to hard labour due to their roles in the defeat.[18]

Following his release from prison by president Anwar Sadat on 23 May 1974, Badran left Egypt and went to live in London.[19] Badran published part of his memoirs in the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Siyasa in 2014.[17] Badran's reports included information about the personal life of Gamal Abdel Nasser which were disputed by Sami Sharaf, a Nasser era official.[20]

Personal life

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Badran married his first wife, Muna Rushdie, on 7 June 1962. The couple had one daughter named Hiba; they divorced in January 1989 by a court decision, as he had been absent for three years. Rushdie worked at The American University in Cairo.[19] In the 1970s he married a British woman with whom he had two children. Badran lived with his family in "self-imposed exile" in the United Kingdom, though one of his children moved to Saudi Arabia and another to the United States.[17]

On 28 November 2020, Badran died in the University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust; however, he had asked to be buried in Egypt.[17]

References

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  1. ^ a b c Panayiotis J. Vatikiotis (1978). Nasser and His Generation. New York: Croom Helm. p. 163. ISBN 978-0-85664-433-7.
  2. ^ a b c "رحيل شمس بدران.. آخر وزراء جمهورية ما وراء الشمس". Al Jazeera (in Arabic). 1 December 2020.
  3. ^ Gilles Kepel (1985). Muslim Extremism in Egypt: The Prophet and Pharaoh. Los Angeles and Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. p. 32. ISBN 978-0-520-05687-9.
  4. ^ Abdou Mubasher (7–13 June 2007). "The road to Naksa". Al Ahram Weekly. 848. Archived from the original on 25 March 2013.
  5. ^ a b Richard Bordeaux Parker, ed. (1996). The Six-Day War: A Retrospective. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. p. 56. ISBN 978-0-8130-1383-1.
  6. ^ "Your torture still shows on our bodies, Brothers tell Nasser's defense minister". Al-Masry Al-Youm. 3 July 2012. Retrieved 30 January 2013.
  7. ^ John Sainsbury (2 August 2013). "Army-Muslim Brotherhood feud has dire consequences for Egypt's future". The Star. Retrieved 10 February 2014.
  8. ^ a b c "Former Ministers of War and Defense". Ministry of Defense. Retrieved 6 January 2024.
  9. ^ "Egypt-Internal Relations". Mongabay. Retrieved 31 January 2013.
  10. ^ Afaf Lutfi Al-Sayyid Marsot (2007). A History of Egypt: From the Arab Conquest to the Present. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 147. ISBN 978-0-521-87717-6.
  11. ^ a b c Moshe Shemesh (2006). "The Fida'iyyun Organization's Contribution to the Descent to the Six-Day War". Israel Studies. 11 (1): 11. doi:10.2979/isr.2006.11.1.1.
  12. ^ "Nasser picks new aide". Eugene Register Guard. Associated Press. 21 July 1967. Retrieved 30 January 2013.
  13. ^ Laura M. James (2006). Nasser at War. Arab Images of the Enemy. London: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 124. doi:10.1057/9780230626379. ISBN 978-0-230-62637-9.
  14. ^ "Ex-Egyptian vice president arrested". The Evening Independent. 4 September 1967. Retrieved 30 January 2013.
  15. ^ Hicham Bou Nassif (Autumn 2013). "Wedded to Mubarak: The Second Careers and Financial Rewards of Egypt's Military Elite, 1981-2011". The Middle East Journal. 67 (4): 510. doi:10.3751/67.4.11. JSTOR 43698073. S2CID 144651187.
  16. ^ a b Hamied Ansari (1986). Egypt: The Stalled Society. New York: SUNY Press. p. 142. ISBN 978-0-88706-183-7.
  17. ^ a b c d "وفاة وزير الحربية المصري الأسبق شمس بدران في لندن". The Independent (in Arabic). 1 December 2020.
  18. ^ Michael C. Desch (2008). Power and Military Effectiveness: The Fallacy of Democratic Triumphalism. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 104. ISBN 978-0-8018-8801-4.
  19. ^ a b Mustafa el Fiqi (25 September 2008). "Shams Badran". Al-Masry Al-Youm. Archived from the original on 29 October 2013. Retrieved 30 January 2013.
  20. ^ David Sadler (25 January 2023). "The departure of Sami Sharaf, the treasurer of Abdel Nasser.. and the prisoner of the Sadat era". Globe Echo. Retrieved 22 August 2023.
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