Month: February 2008

Free Fouad Mourtada

The arrest and brutal treatment of Fouad Mourtada, the young man who create a fake Facebook profile of Morocco’s Prince Moulay Rachid, is a sad testimony to the fact that things have not changed as much as the regime would like you to believe in Morocco. Here is the statement his supporters have put out:

Official statement of the Committee of Support for Fouad Mourtada, after a first visit at Oukacha jail.

One week after his disappearance and imprisonment by the Moroccan police force Tuesday February 05, it was finally possible for the family of Fouad to visit him this Tuesday February 12 afternoon at Oukacha jail in Casablanca, Morocco.

Fouad, distraught after one week of detention, stated the following facts:

“I was arrested on the morning of Tuesday by two individuals who embarked me on a vehicle then blindfolded my eyes with a black band. After about fifteen minutes, they changed vehicle, then took me along to some building to undergo an interrogation there. There I was persecuted, beaten up, slapped, spat on and insulted. I was also slammed for hours with a tool on the head and the legs. This calvary lasted such a long time that I lost consciousness several times and also lost the notion of time. I was completely surprised to learn, when I was taken again to another location, that it was Wednesday “.

Concerning the Facebook account, incriminated Fouad indicated:

“I actually created this account on January 15, 2008. It remained on line a few days before somebody closed it. There are so many profiles of celebrities on Facebook. I never thought that by creating a profile of his highness prince Moulay Rachid I am harming him in any way. I, as a matter of fact, did not send any message from that account to anyone. It was just a joke, a gag. I regret my gesture and beg my forgiveness from my whole family for the harm that I have caused them. I am not an evil doer; my ambition in the life was simply to have a stable job and a normal life “.

Fouad Mourtada awaits the starting of his trial, Friday February 15. He could be facing 5 years of prison, to have done what thousands of people throughout the world do everyday: create a profile of a celebrity or a star on Facebook.

For analysis on Morocco’s monarchy-controlled “democratization process” see this analysis from the Middle East Institute, which concludes:

Morocco’s road towards greater democratization remains a project in the making. On the one hand, the climate of greater freedom of speech and accountability on the part of officials is unmistakable, as is the sobering recognition of the enormity of the task ahead. On the other hand, the lingering notion that any reform, constitutional or otherwise, derives from and depends upon the good will of the monarch is a hin- drance to any profound changes to the current system. As he nears his first decade on the throne, Muhammad VI faces the challenge of stirring his nation towards a better future while maintaining the stability and relative tranquility that have made Morocco the envy of other Middle Eastern and North African countries.

A good first step would be that the king ensures that identity theft, if Mourtada’s prank can be described as such, be handled professionally by ordinary police rather than secret service thugs whose beatings are reminiscent of the torture and disappearances of the late King Hassan II’s reign. Even though Mourtada may get off without a jail sentence due to the bad publicity this brings the monarchy, that is not enough: an apology and the disciplining of those responsible for his treatment should ensue.

al-Jazeera condemns satellite TV “ethical charter”

Kudos to Jazeera for condemning the recently announced “ethical charter” for Arab satellite stations:

Al Jazeera calls Charter issued by the Arab League’s Minister’s of Information a risk to the freedom of expression in the Arab world


 DOHA, Qatar, February 15, 2008: Al Jazeera considers the adoption of the charter “Principles for Regulating Satellite TV in the Arab World� issued by the Arab League’s Minister’s of Information a risk to the freedom of expression in the Arab world. Some of the language contained within the Charter is ambiguous and could be interpreted to actively hinder independent reporting from the region.

Wadah Khanfar, Director General of the Al Jazeera Network stated that, “Any code of ethics or governance for journalistic practices should emerge, and be governed, from within the profession and not be imposed externally by political institutions. Where codes of ethics are violated and contraventions of journalistic practice occur, for defamation of character or otherwise, there should be independent legal processes to resolve these issues. The region has seen the recent emergence of many media institutions and every attempt should be made not to hamper, but to facilitate, an environment to encourage their independence and freedom.�

Links February 13th to February 15th

Links for February 13th through February 15th:

AJE: Copts

al-Jazeera English ran some rare incisive coverage of Coptic issues in Egypt a few days ago, good questions from the interviewer (notably on the census and church-building) with interesting interventions by Michael Mounir, the prominent US-based Coptic activist. Also discussion of church-issues etc.

That was part 2, you can find part 1 here.

Bidoun Winter 2008: Souffles and Maghrebi counter-culture

The Winter 2008 issue of Bidoun, the Middle Eastern arts and culture magazine, has been out for a few weeks now. For some weird reason I can never access it directly from Egypt, it only works through a proxy like proxyfellow.com or hidemyass.com, but it’s worth the trouble to check out the striking cover (below) and some of the articles they put online, such as the essay on Moroccan counter-culture in the 1960s/1970s by Issandr El Amrani. Get the print issue (in Cairo from the Townhouse gallery, elsewhere at good magazine stores) to read about Ismail Yassin and much more.

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(No, I don’t think that building really exists.)

Links February 9th to February 11th

Links for February 9th through February 11th:

Scobey’s testimony

The appointment, pending congressional approval (which appears to be forthcoming soon), of Margaret Scobey as the next US Ambassador to Egypt has continued to get the local press’ interest, with her testimony to Congress’ Foreign Affairs Committee — notably her mention of the Ayman Nour case and the human rights situation in Egypt — earning much commentary. A long-time reader sent me the full text of Scobey’s testimony, which I’m posting after the jump. In the meantime, I’m curious to hear what readers know about the women who will become the first female ambassador to Cairo — a tough job if there ever was one considering that both sides are schizophrenic about what remains a deep, complex and important bilateral relationship. In my time in Egypt the three ambassadors I’ve known brought quite different styles to their post; their policies however remained largely the same even if constrained by rising anti-Egypt sentiment in Congress and the US press (and although this is less influential, vice-versa.) From what she said, Scobey appears to be more of the same.

Continue reading Scobey’s testimony

The Iraq Project

Paul Rogers on the Iraq Project:

In an echo of the Baghdad embassy, Balad has grown to become the largest US air-base anywhere in the world: a fifteen-square-mile mini-city with its own bus routes, fast-food outlets, two supermarkets and accommodation for 40,000 military personnel and contractors. The base – from which up to 550 air operations each day are conducted – is a permanent construction site; the latest addition is a $30-million command-and-control system that will integrate air-traffic management across the country as a whole.In sum, the United States plan for Iraq is to establish a series of tight political mechanisms of control deriving from the original CPA-era agreements; a huge embassy-based structure in Baghdad to oversee and maintain these; immunity for over 300,000 foreign personnel; and continuing, direct authority over and access to Iraqi detainees. The entire operation is to be secured by the US military and its private contractors, increasingly protected by the use of air power.This ambitious project is hardly consistent with the idea – still the official line propagated by Washington, and uncritically recycled by much of the establishment media – that the US’s political objective is to bolster the independent governance of Iraq by the Iraqis themselves. Indeed, it goes further than the considerable power exerted by the United States in several central American countries in the early 20th century; its sheer grandeur might better be compared to some of the French or British colonial-era protectorates. In contemporary terms, it comes close to the establishment of a fully-fledged American colony in the heart of the Arab and Islamic world. Whether or not the George W Bush administration and its supporters realise it, the implications of that – for Iraq itself and for the whole region – are set to match even what has happened over the last five years.Â