Suez authorities on Thursday arrested three suspects accused of killing engineering student Ahmed Hussein Eid Sunday.
The victim's fiancée and a number of eyewitnesses gave descriptions of one of the suspects, who was then arrested and led police to the other two, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
The suspects allegedly told authorities they had not intended to kill Hussein, but that one of them had stabbed him when an argument escalated into a physical fight, according to the statement issued Thursday.
State-run Al-Akhbar newspaper reported that the victim was walking with his fiancée and cousin toward a minibus stop in the Arbaeen neighborhood of Suez, when three bearded men wearing white galabeyas and riding a motorcycle stopped him.
They asked him about the woman accompanying him and when he said she was his fiancée, they warned him against walking with her, calling it "haram" and an "abomination," the paper reported. The student shouted at them and told them that he was free to do what he wanted.
Eid’s fiancée told prosecutors during investigations that one of the men stabbed him in the groin with a knife before the three drove away on a motorcycle, according to Al-Masry Al-Youm.
A group which calls itself the Authority for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice in Egypt declared responsibility for the act and said in a statement on Facebook that it wanted Eid beaten with a stick.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
