So if you haven’t taken a look at them yet — sorry, they’re graphic but they show the truth you won’t see on your TV set — do so now.
The two are still in Tora, and won’t be released before tomorrow…
MABROUK! MABROUK!
Euphoria is sweeping across the activists’ circles. My mobile is getting flooded by SMSs about Sharqawi’s release. I spoke with several Kefaya activists and rights lawyers over the phone, and I could hardly hear what they were saying as they were shouting and screaming cheerfully. At least two broke down in tears of disbelief while speaking as they had almost lost hope in seeing the two young men free soon.
Let’s hope Sharqawi’s and Sha3er’s release will go through quickly and that they will be freed tomorrow, without facing the same treatment 3alaa got on his release.
I want to thank every Arabist reader who expressed his/her support and solidarity with Sharqawi, Sha3er and the rest of the pro-democracy detainees.
There are still hundreds of MB detainees, like Dr. Essam el-Erian, languishing in Tora, following their arrest in pro-democracy demos, just like Sharqawi and Sha3er. I hope their release will come soon…
There will be two sessions…
5pm to 7pm: Labor and Political Change, featuring labor unionist Fathallah Mahrouss, member of the Coordinating Committee for Unions Rights and Liberties, and Fatma Ramadan, a labor researcher with Center for Socialist Studies.
7:30pm to 10pm: The Current Political Forces and Labor Union Elections, featuring a group of labor union activists: Hamdi Hassan from The Afaq Ishtrakiya Center, Kamal Abu 3eita from Karama Movement, Mohamed Abu Samra from the Labor Party, Mohamed Hassan from Workers for Change, Mohamed 3abdel 3azim from the Coordinating Committee for Unions Rights and Liberties, and Mohammadi 3abdel Maqsoud, a Muslim Brothers Labor MP.
Sha3er and Sharqawi are the only two remaining Kefaya detainees, after the release of their fellow secular activists. (Hundreds of MBs are still in Tora Prison.)
The two activists’ treatment in prison has been steadily deteriorating, and Sharqawi recently received death threats from a criminal with ties to security, and the two have been prevented from visits by lawyers.
The delegation of university professors which tried to meet the Public Prosecutor today, was received by his aide only, who promised Sharqawi and Sha3er would be released today, before their detention review tomorrow, Kefaya is saying. Kefaya has called for a demo tomorrow in front of the State Security Prosecutor‘s office in Heliopolis, if the Assistant Public Prosecutor’s promise turned out to be farce.
UPDATE: 3alaa published more details on his blog…
Prison authorities prevented Lawyer Gamal Eid from visiting his client Mohammed Al Sharkawy yesterday (Monday the 17th) even though state security prosecutor issued a visit permit, after much deliberation they allowed him to see Karim Al Shaer only.
According to Gamal Eid, Karim’s right Arm was injured by a switch blade after a criminal inmate attacked him, Karim suspects the attack was arranged by police officers. Karim is being detained in the infamous 12a cell, where acts of violence are quite common.
Today Lawyer Rajia Omran was prevented from visiting both Mohammed Sharkawy and Karim Al Shaer despite having another permit from state security prosecutor, she filed a complaint with Maadi district prosecutor accusing officer Ayman Ra’fat and the prison Sherif of denying the prisoners their basic constitutional rights and obstructing a decision taken by a judiciary body.
This comes directly after Sharkawy receiving several death threats, friends and colleagues are worried that prison authority might be trying to hide a violent crime against Sharkawy.
On the other hand a delegation of university professors, journalists, lawyers and activists went to the General Prosecutor office today to hand out a statement demanding the immediate release of Mohammed Sharkawy and Karim Al Shaer. hundreds had signed the statement in solidarity with the two torture victims. Judge Adel Said, the general prosecutors aid announced that the two will be released today.
MONTREAL (AFP) – Ali El-Akhras wanted to introduce his children to his grandparents in Lebanon to show how three generations had thrived in Canada, but the carnage his parents once fled ended the trip and their lives.
An Israeli air strike destroyed the family home in Aitaroun in southern Lebanon this past week, killing the Montreal pharmacist, his wife and children, as well as his mother and an uncle, relatives said.
“We’re all devastated. It’s a shock,” Walid El-Akhras, 21, a relative who works at the family grocery in Montreal told AFP on Monday.
All were Canadians with dual Lebanese citizenship. Three of their Lebanese relatives also died in the blast, he said. Canadian officials have confirmed seven family members died but relatives say eight were killed.
Israeli forces have pounded targets in Lebanon since the middle of last week after the Hezbollah militant group captured two Israeli soldiers and began launching its own barrage of rockets into Israel.
On Monday, customers offered their condolences to the family. One wholesaler dropping off goods said: “It’s senseless.”
Ali El-Akhras had graduated from Montreal University and worked for the popular pharmacy chain Jean Coutu in the city’s Cote-des-Neiges district.
He had scrimped and saved to afford to bring his four children, aged one to eight years old, to Lebanon and introduce them to relatives for the first time, his sister Mayssoun El-Akhras told reporters at a press conference in Montreal.
“He wanted to return because the country was for a while peaceful … but they died as they slept, they burned to death in the same room,” she said, evoking images and sounds of the bombs their parents “had fled 35 years ago which finally caught up to them.”
Bush curses in unscripted Mideast comments
By JULIE MASON
Copyright 2006 Houston ChronicleST. PETERSBURG – President Bush inadvertently dropped the facade of carefully scripted summit diplomacy today when his lunchtime conversation with other world leaders was picked up by Russian television.
“The irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this (expletive) and it’s over,” Bush told British Prime Minister Tony Blair during lunch today, unaware their microphones were on.
The exchange, broadcast by Russian host television as the Group of Eight world leaders gathered for a closed session on their last day here, revealed a more candid side of the polite, often bland diplomacy officials show publicly.
Before Blair leaned over and snapped off the microphones, he and Bush discussed the Middle East, made small talk about travel plans, Diet Coke, and upcoming remarks the leaders would be making as the session came to a close.
“I’m just going to make it up,” Bush said. “I’m not going to talk too damn long like the rest of them. Some of these guys talk too long.”
The other thing that came out of this is that “Condi” is going “out there.”
Update: This isn’t the best recording, but here’s the BBC’s footage + interview.
President Jacques Chirac of France characterized the statement issued here as a call for a cease-fire — a word the Bush administration has sidestepped at every turn over the last few days. The host of the summit meeting, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, told reporters that “we do get the impression that the aims of Israel go beyond just recovering their kidnapped soldiers.’’
Talking to reporters here on Sunday evening, R. Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, acknowledged that the statement does not present any specific order for steps to solve the crisis; rather, he said, it presumes that Israel will stand down only after Hezbollah and Hamas stop shelling Israeli towns and release captured soldiers.
That’s right — absolutely nothing.
I edited the English translations of articles today written by a couple of friends in Lebanon — Hassan Dawoud, the writer and editor a major cultural weekly and the journalist and poet Youssef Bazzi — and they will both be shortly online (in Arabic, English and French) at babelmed.net, the Mediterranean culture site. Hassan and Youssef’s articles make me worry about the psychological impact of this war, which seems much greater than the 1996 Israeli operation Grapes of Wrath (then again, so is the damage). Youssef — your classic mad, intense Lebanese poet — has a wonderful turn of phrase to describe Lebanon in his piece: “a P.O. box for violent opportunists.”
But thanks to those who keep the comments section busy, and as always I’m happy to get corrections on factual mistakes.