Rafah, Egypt - When an Egyptian border official boarded a bus full of South African doctors and journalists at the Gaza border, he was looking for someone. The official had a list of the names of all 41 people on the bus when they arrived at Rafah border post in the Sinai desert at the northeastern edge of Egypt on Thursday afternoon.
Going through the list slowly, stopping for the occasional joke about Bafana Bafana or diplomats he knew in Pretoria, he methodically called out every name, then checked the passport holder and the document against his list.
The group then got off and unpacked the bus, ready to move into Gaza. Mostly medical specialists, the group is organised by Gift of the Givers, a South African disaster relief organisation. It was trying to get to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City to offer help.
But, once in the terminal building, even though all the passports were handed in as a single bundle, Dr Feroz Abubaker Ganchi was soon quietly singled out and taken away by officials who knew exactly what he looked like.
The identification process of the man once arrested in Pakistan and accused of links to al-Qaeda was underlined yesterday when the team, now down to 40, once again tried to get through the border.
An official got on to the bus but, instead of checking each passport against its owner and against his list, he simply looked briefly at each passport waved at him.
Although the rest of the team refused to leave the border terminal building until nearly midnight on Friday in the hope that last-minute mediation by diplomats in different countries could get Ganchi back, yesterday he was still in custody, reportedly whisked away to Cairo.
There were concerns that Ganchi's arrest might have jeopardised the humanitarian mission.
"I don't want him on this mission any more; he's becoming a distraction," Dr Imtiaz Sooliman, the team leader, told the rest of the team yesterday. He had spent a lot of time negotiating with officials in South Africa, Egypt and Jordan to get the missing doctor back.
The team spent hours on Friday at Rafah unpacking their bus - which is not permitted transit to Gaza - shifting 50 to 60 boxes of emergency medical supplies through the terminal, then having to move them all back again.
Yesterday, the whole process was repeated. Boxes are starting to get battered and drugs packed into one box were damaged.
The jumbo jetload of about 84 tons of aid from Johannesburg arrived at Rafah by road from Cairo yesterday morning. Owing to the refusal to allow vehicles transit, that load had to be unloaded from one set of trucks at the border and reloaded on to another once the team was allowed into Gaza.
Finally, Egyptian officials allowed the South African disaster relief team into Gaza just after 3.00pm yesterday.
Officials told the team that Ganchi would be deported last night.
Ganchi is an emergency medical practitioner at a state hospital in Upington. His name was on the full list of expedition members that Gift of the Givers provided to both South African and Egyptian authorities before they left South Africa.
When the team flew out on Wednesday, Ganchi was briefly questioned by officials at OR Tambo International Airport. In Cairo, he was briefly questioned by Egyptian officials, then released.
Before the team left Cairo, he said he was there for humanitarian reasons. "We are most hopeful that we're going to get there," was all he would say about the expedition.
But officials at the Rafah border crossing were clearly forewarned by colleagues in Cairo and waiting to pounce.
Ganchi has been accused of links to one of the US's top terror suspects, a Tanzanian accused of bombing the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania 10 years ago.
Ganchi and Zubair Ismael, a South African student, were part of a group arrested in July 2004 in Gujarat in Pakistan after a gun battle of several hours with Pakistani authorities.
They were arrested with Ahmed Khafan Ghailani, a Tanzanian on the US's list of most wanted people accused of being a top al-Qaeda operative wanted for the bloody 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. Ghailani, reported by the BBC to be known also as "Foopie" or "Ahmed the Tanzanian" had a US bounty of millions of dollars on his head.
The South African government intervened and managed to get Ganchi and Ismael deported home. They apparently spent two days in custody in South Africa and were then released.
There is no indication that either was ever charged with anything.
- Louise Flanagan's trip was sponsored by Gift of the Givers