Tonight on CBS Criminal Minds Beyond Borders continues with an all new Wednesday March 30, season 11 episode 3 called “Denial,” and we have your weekly recap below. On tonight’s episode, the team heads to Cairo to uncover who is behind a gas attack there on an Egyptian-American and the disappearance of the victim’s friend.
On the last episode, an American attending a festival in Mumbai woke up missing a kidney and his friend gone. The investigation lead Garrett and his team to suspect the UnSub was up to more than just trading organs on the Black Market. Did you watch the last episode? If you missed it, we have a full and detailed recap right here for you.
On tonight’s episode as per the CBS synopsis, “the International Response Team heads to Cairo when an Egyptian-American former U.S. serviceman is killed in a gas attack there and his friend goes missing.”
Tonight’s episode looks like it is going it going to be great and you won’t want to miss it, so be sure to tune in for our live coverage of CBS’s Criminal Minds Beyond Borders at 10:00 PM EST!
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There had been an incident in Cairo. Apparently Monte had been alerted to the unusual death of Malik Said who had been a first generation Egyptian-American as well a former serviceman in the military, but someone had killed Malik using a chemical agent. That had been thrown in his car at the last minute to trap him inside and that caused a quite a few to speculate about there being a terrorist angle.
Malik had been a model student back in the states and he had been honorable discharged after he tore up his knee on duty. Yet, Malik had gone back to Egypt to start up a small business and from all appearances he seemed to have adjusted his new lifestyle. He had still gone out with friends and had in fact been meeting with fellow American Henry “Hank” Willis when he had been targeted. Only there had been no sign of Hank.
Hank’s cell phone had been found in the victim’s car and there was evidence of Malik meeting up with him to offer him a ride after a long work day. But there had been no sign of the fellow American at the crime scene and there also wasn’t a clear definition of Hank and Malik’s relationship. So no one knew what the two were to each other.
They had assumed the two men were friends though they were years apart and literally had nothing in common. However, it didn’t make sense that none of their other friends or even their family had known mentioned their friendship. And it did seem that in this day and age the two hadn’t posted information or possibly a joint picture of them on Facebook.
Though the IRT had something else to worry about after they landed in Egypt. It turns out Malik hadn’t been the only one to be gassed to death and so there had been another victim to compare notes yet Jabir’s death hadn’t been given the same recognition. The local Egyptian police had assumed that Jabir killed himself because he had been found alone in his apartment and there hadn’t been any signs of a break-in.
Jabir’s widow on the other hand had known that her husband hadn’t killed himself. She later told Clara and Mae that she knew Jabir had been killed and that the police didn’t want to hear it. She said they didn’t care what happened to the poor and that’s why her husband’s death had been so easily dismissed.
Only there could have been another reason for why they had ignored her pleas and she probably hadn’t even suspected. It seems Monte had stayed behind in the states and so he had a better opportunity than most to question Malik and Hank’s mothers. And, well, Hank’s mother ended up revealing (in confidence) that the two men were in a relationship as in they were gay in a country that vilifies homosexuals.
So the IRT thought they were dealing with a hate crime and that meant Hank couldn’t be their UnSub. Though the last had been clear by what they found at Malik’s crime scene. Hank had apparently gone to the truck to get a beer and someone had knocked him out before he could see them coming.
Although with the hate crime angle, the IRT had to go about questioning the gay community with stealth. Egypt actually doesn’t criminalize being gay, but often gay men would be hit with charges of debauchery and other such nonsense therefore they were always harassed by the police. As well as their own community.
Only a man named Omar had come up with an underground gay scene that allowed them to be as safe as they could. So Garrett and Matt shook off their Egyptian “protection” in order to meet with Omar in secret. And he told them that he knew Hank and Malik however he didn’t recognize Jabir which in this case meant Jabir wasn’t part of the gay community.
The community in Egypt was small and they only allowed people they could trust into their group. Yet, Omar didn’t know Jabir and the one suspect he could think of was a man named Safar Arabi. Safar had apparently pushed his way into a party one night and the a couple of guys had beaten him up because they knew they had to police themselves before homophobe began naming names.
So Safar for a short time was considered their best suspect, but the UnSub had gotten to him first. Therefore, they eventually found Safar’s after he had been killed with the same gas as Malik and Jabir. And that’s when they knew they weren’t in fact dealing with a hate crime.
Though they couldn’t figure out how all the victims knew each other until they found a picture. A picture of Safar, Hank, and Malik yet it had been clear that Jabir took the picture. The picture being of them protesting during the Arab Spring and calling for freedom in Egypt. Only it was revealed afterwards that the guys had gotten in a disagreement about which freedoms they were going to fight for.
Safar had wanted a more liberal Egypt yet he hadn’t wanted to pursue homosexual rights so that’s where the guys had ran into conflict. However, there had been a fourth man in the picture and so Garrett realized Hank had been taken in order to identify that fourth man. And he was going to be dead the second he revealed a name.
But the UnSub proved to have been pretty good at what she did. No one had known that Jabir had gotten sick after he took up photographing Arab Spring and was hit with bullets as well as gas attacks. So his widow had either not known or had hidden that for a reason.
And as luck would have it, they found the same miniature gas tanks that she was using to kill her victims at the same home she shared with Jabir.
Jabir’s death while sad had triggered his widow Neith into pursuing the deaths of the people she held responsible. So as a trauma induced retribution seeker, she had tortured Hank because he had been his idea to protest and it had been his idea to enlist Jabir. Yet she had tried to kill off the rest with dangerous gas because her husband had suffered the effect of it for years before finally succumbing.
So they had found Neith as she was targeting their last victim and they had tried to get her to see that she still had her daughter to live for. But, by then, it hadn’t mattered to her. She had killed herself in order to join her husband. And the IRT had to go looking for where she had left Hank.
She had hated Hank the most so they knew she wouldn’t have made his death quick though they had been a close call when they finally found Hank buried alive. And thus the young man couldn’t wait to go back to the states. Where he was reunited with his mother and finally met Malik’s mom who came to accept what her son was when she was shown evidence of how much he had loved Hank.
But Garrett had realized something on this mission. He had realized that he had been quick to judgment in dealing with Egyptian forces and so he had made amends before he left. And hopefully that had created some common respect for the other’s culture.
THE END!