Bin Laden and his terrorist followers, who escaped from Egypt, imagined that Egypt could be a stage for their malicious operations. Their first target was to strike the symbols of the state, the cultured and the intellectuals, and to create a moral dread within Egyptians. Their second target was to strike the Egyptian police and their third objective was to attack the Christians, to distort the image of Egypt in the international mass media, showing the Copts as hostages in the hands of radical religious groups, claiming that the state was unable to protect them.