Imagine the horror of discovering that you have been rubbing shoulders with terrorists. No, I’m not talking about those gullible souls who join the Gaza marches in London, but about the British airline crew who had an unfortunate brush with Hamas at a five-star Marriott hotel in Cairo. Full marks to the Daily Mail, whose veteran photographer Mark Large snapped several of the 154 jihadis freed by Israel as they lived it up at the inexplicably named Renaissance Cairo Mirage City.

What’s a terrorist to do? You recruit suicide bombers, oversee a bus bombing or murder a police officer, get banged up, luck out with early release as part of an exchange for innocent Israeli hostages who had been kept in Hamas catacombs for two years, you’re just enjoying the first luxury buffet you’ve had in years – then the British press turns up!

Frankly, it made me miss my time as a reporter on the road. The Marriott, we are told, boasts of being the ‘preferred air crew hub hotel in Cairo’, hosting six airlines regularly due to its proximity to the airport. Or perhaps that should now be ‘boasted’, as one imagines that its time catering to air crew has rather passed.

Cabin staff at the hotel, where rooms start at £200 per night, told the Mail that they were contemplating piling furniture in front of their bedroom doors just in case 7 October came knocking. And who can blame them?

Among the terrorists enjoying the Marriott’s facilities were Mahmoud Issa, who founded Special Unit 101 of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, a........

© The Spectator