James Tully (Irish politician) Local government Tully decided on alterations to the plans for the controversial Dublin Corporation Civic Offices. Tully was appointed Deputy Leader of the Labour Party under Michael O'Leary in 1981, and Minister for Defence in the short-lived 1981–82 Fine Gael-Labour Party government. In that capacity he traveled to Cairo in 1981 as Ireland's representative in Egypt's annual 6 October military victory parade. While in the reviewing stand, next to President Anwar Sadat, he suffered a shrapnel injury to his face when Sadat was assassinated by members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad who had infiltrated the Egyptian Army. In 1982, a few
Anwar Sadat the telephone exchange building, and of course the radio and television building, where news of the Islamic revolution would then be broadcast, unleashing—he expected—a popular uprising against secular authority all over the country". In February 1981, Egyptian authorities were alerted to El-Jihad's plan by the arrest of an operative carrying crucial information. In September, Sadat ordered a highly unpopular roundup of more than 1,500 people, including many Jihad members, but also the Coptic Pope and other Coptic clergy, intellectuals and activists of all ideological stripes. All non-government press was banned as well. The round up missed a Jihad cell in