Osama is not the Arab everyman

So Egyptian media moguls the Adib brothers are talking to Robert de Niro on the sidelines of the Cannes Film Festival, where they are presenting the Yacoubian Building, about making a movie about Osama Bin Laden:

The pipeline movie about Osama bin Laden, head of the Al-Qaeda network and the world’s most wanted man, has also caught the eye of Robert de Niro, one of the world’s most respected actor/directors and co-founder of the Tribeca festival.

De Niro wants to see the script when it is completed next month, Adel Adeeb, Emad’s brother and head of group’s GN4 Film and Music arm, said.

But though De Niro is interested in the project, which will start shooting next year, he is not planning on playing one of the characters, he emphasised.

The movie will revolve around an imaginary meeting between an American journalist and bin Laden in which both men explore their completely opposing views of world politics.

“Our aim is not defend bin Laden” but to help create a dialogue between the Western and Middle Eastern worlds, leading to a better understanding between them, underlined both brothers.

Great — a movie about civilizational dialogue and the Westerner is a journalist while Osama stands in for the Arabs. Very representative.

Abu-Assad and Paradise Now

Hany Abu-Assad, director of Paradise Now, responds to the Angry Arab’s critique of his film:

I attempted to repaint the story no longer from the mythological point of view but from that of current reality. To kill yourself with your enemy is a Biblical story. The story of Samson already tells us that people prefer to kill themselves together with their enemies rather than accept humiliation. I believe the story of Samson never happened, but was written as a fable in order to tell us something about human beings and humiliation. Unfortunately, the same story is now happening on the same land, with different people. It’s no longer a fable, but a reality. If I wanted to repaint it, I had to take it beyond its subject. Instead of concluding that people choose to kill themselves with others rather than accept humiliation, which has already been done, I began with this point and then tried to open the discussion about morality and its relevance. To be or not to be. The Last Supper also happened 2,000 years ago in Palestine, not in Italy. Leonardo Da Vinci painted as if the light came from God. I tried to repaint it in a new medium in a place not far from where it happened, but with the light coming from a neon lamp.

We the Palestinians are a human phenomenon facing a gigantic colonizer, and we refuse to give up. What’s more, our colonizer doesn’t simply want to pillage our resources under the guise of “civilizing” us, it wants us off the land altogether. We are facing a project of ethnic cleansing. Our only weapons are persistence, knowledge, culture and art. The role of art in this case is to be so creative as to change our specific case into a universal one without losing authenticity or the differences of details. It must feel real without generalizing or stereotyping. Oppression necessitates a militarily strong, organized group, but art necessitates talented individuals whose conscience is not for sale. A superior book or a beautiful painting will persist throughout history as a metaphor for humanity in all times and all places. Let the Israelis put all their energy into the science of oppression, serving the interests of a civilization that not long ago made them into soap in order to protect the narrow idea of a Jewish state. Let the Palestinians instead put all of their energy into the science of the human….

Sexual abuse as a tool against dissidents

It’s not the first time that Egyptian police rape people they arrest — it happened several times a few years ago when the security services were conducting a pogrom against homosexuals. But the sheer barbarity of using sticks to sodomize dissidents (a claim now verified by several rights activists) tells you a lot about the nature of this regime and how it has gotten completely out of control. Here’s a statement from a Kifaya on the matter:

A horrid torture festival in the Mubaraks’ Abu Ghraib
Torture and Sodomizing

A new crime reveals Mubarak Jr’s “New Thought” to continue his father’s approach and to revive the memory of sexually attacking Egyptian women during last year’s constitutional referendum that was enacted to extend the Mubarak dictatorship. State Security officers sodomized Mohammed El-Sharkawi, a young activist, using rolled cartoon paper for nearly 15 minutes. They tore his underwear and threatened to rape him. This came as part of the horrid torture festival that Karim Al-Shae’r, another activist, was exposed to in Kasr El Nil Police Station.

This is the peak of the crime that was recorded during interrogations in the State Security Prosecutor Bureau in Misr Al-Gadida. The crime started when they dragged El-Sharkawi on the ground from Ma’rouf st. to the entrance of a building at the cross road of Ma’rouf and Talat Harb streets, where he was brutally beaten. Lawyers who have seen him recalled torture perpetrated against Islamists. Afterwards, El-Sharkawi was blindfolded and taken in a blue microbus to what is thought to be Kasr El Nil Police Station where he was detained for 24 hours. There he was exposed to more torture.

According to lawyers, there is nearly no area on El-Sharkawi’s body that is void of bruises, swells, or injury. This insinuates as stated by the lawyer and human rights activist, Gamal Eid, that the torture was perpetrated with extreme “spitefulness”.

A few minutes after El-Sharkawi was kidnapped, State Security officers were dragging journalist Jihan Shaaban on the ground simply because she was accompanying Karim Al-Sha’er, each going to their home. Dina Samak and Dina Gameel were also dragged on the ground because they were present there. Dina Samak was injured and bruised. The fact that she is six months pregnant did not act as a deterrent to such attacks.

No respect to women and no respect to pregnant women is the slogan of the father and the son. No respect to honor. Both sexes are treated equally when it comes to sexual and physical assaults. Lawyers could not maintain their calmness when they saw the beastly marks of torture all over the activists’ bodies. It was as if they were in Abu Ghraib-Mubarak.

According to the activists, the torture festival lasted for four hours before news spread that they are on their way to the prosecutor where the crime of the Mubarak Sr. and Jr. was revealed at around 11:30 pm.

The audacity of Mubarak’s regime will not stop. It has found the boldness to harass lawyers and attempt to stop them from attending interrogations. After a verbal quarrel, authorities agreed for one lawyer to attend, then two, then three.

Before the prosecutor, El-Shrakawi and Al-Sha’er insisted that the torture that they have been exposed to should be registered in the interrogation files. They refused to make any statements until they are put before a delegated investigative judge. They demanded that they are sent to the forensic department. Until 1:00 a.m. the prosecutor continued to interrogate them, to decided, at the end, to detain the two activists for 15 days. They are accused of violating emergency law codes that prohibits more than five persons assembling. The prosecutor ordered that they are sent to the forensic department, if possible. This means that we will have to wait until Saturday at the least.

The prosecutor refused to allow a doctor who volunteered to make first aid treatment. There are doubts that El-Sharkawi’s ribs are broken. The prosecutor also refused to transfer them to a hospital for treatment.

For a comprehensive coverage of Thursday’s event:
Torture and Sodomizing

A new crime reveals Mubarak Jr’s “New Thought” to continue his father’s approach and to revive the memory of sexually attacking Egyptian women during last year’s constitutional referendum that was enacted to extend the Mubarak dictatorship. State Security officers sodomized Mohammed El-Sharkawi, a young activist, using rolled cartoon paper for nearly 15 minutes. They tore his underwear and threatened to rape him. This came as part of the horrid torture festival that Karim Al-Shae’r, another activist, was exposed to in Kasr El Nil Police Station.

This is the peak of the crime that was recorded during interrogations in the State Security Prosecutor Bureau in Misr Al-Gadida. The crime started when they dragged El-Sharkawi on the ground from Ma’rouf st. to the entrance of a building at the cross road of Ma’rouf and Talat Harb streets, where he was brutally beaten. Lawyers who have seen him recalled torture perpetrated against Islamists. Afterwards, El-Sharkawi was blindfolded and taken in a blue microbus to what is thought to be Kasr El Nil Police Station where he was detained for 24 hours. There he was exposed to more torture.

According to lawyers, there is nearly no area on El-Sharkawi’s body that is void of bruises, swells, or injury. This insinuates as stated by the lawyer and human rights activist, Gamal Eid, that the torture was perpetrated with extreme “spitefulness”.

A few minutes after El-Sharkawi was kidnapped, State Security officers were dragging journalist Jihan Shaaban on the ground simply because she was accompanying Karim Al-Sha’er, each going to their home. Dina Samak and Dina Gameel were also dragged on the ground because they were present there. Dina Samak was injured and bruised. The fact that she is six months pregnant did not act as a deterrent to such attacks.

No respect to women and no respect to pregnant women is the slogan of the father and the son. No respect to honor. Both sexes are treated equally when it comes to sexual and physical assaults. Lawyers could not maintain their calmness when they saw the beastly marks of torture all over the activists’ bodies. It was as if they were in Abu Ghraib-Mubarak.

According to the activists, the torture festival lasted for four hours before news spread that they are on their way to the prosecutor where the crime of the Mubarak Sr. and Jr. was revealed at around 11:30 pm.

The audacity of Mubarak’s regime will not stop. It has found the boldness to harass lawyers and attempt to stop them from attending interrogations. After a verbal quarrel, authorities agreed for one lawyer to attend, then two, then three.

Before the prosecutor, El-Shrakawi and Al-Sha’er insisted that the torture that they have been exposed to should be registered in the interrogation files. They refused to make any statements until they are put before a delegated investigative judge. They demanded that they are sent to the forensic department. Until 1:00 a.m. the prosecutor continued to interrogate them, to decided, at the end, to detain the two activists for 15 days. They are accused of violating emergency law codes that prohibits more than five persons assembling. The prosecutor ordered that they are sent to the forensic department, if possible. This means that we will have to wait until Saturday at the least.

The prosecutor refused to allow a doctor who volunteered to make first aid treatment. There are doubts that El-Sharkawi’s ribs are broken. The prosecutor also refused to transfer them to a hospital for treatment.

Here’s a picture of Sharqawi from a recent demo:

Img 2280

Impressions from Washington

Sumita Pahwa, one of the organizers of the Washington, DC, 25 May demo, writes about the day:

Ustaz Ibrahim and I got there a bit early to set things up, and within a few minutes there were two police-type cars there, which read “United States Secret Service – Uniformed Division” and the cops asked us what we were protesting about. Then a few minutes later a State Department security/secret service guy came up, introduced himself and asked lots of questions about why we were protesting, chatted about the time he had spent in the Middle East, and mentioned that the Embassy was “concerned” about our protest. He asked us to stay within a small perimeter and said that they didn’t want to create an uncomfortable situation because the Egyptian government provided a lot of security for the American embassy in Cairo so out of reciprocity and courtesy they had to address the Egyptian security demands in Washington…Ibrahim quipped that it was already starting to look like a Cairo rally, with more security than protestors present. There were official and security type Egyptian men coming up near the entrance and chatting and looking at us. Perhaps they were a bit flustered to not have their reassuring rows of amn al-markazi there.

Continue reading Impressions from Washington

Droubi released!

Finally some good news for a change…..

Youth for Change activist, Ahmad Yasser el-Droubi, was released today. Droubi was among the first group of pro-judges activists to be arrested last April, and spent his prison time in Tora. The State Security prosecutor has decided to release him, based oh his medical conditions. Droubi is diabetic, and his health was deteriorating in detention.
I spoke with Droubi over the phone. He’s home with his family, and in high spirits, looking forward to meet all of his friends and fellow activists.

I thought of sharing the happy news with you, as there was nothing good coming out of Cairo for sometime.

Mabrouk ya shabab!

At least 1,000 Al-Qaeda suspects nabbed in Pakistan, new study reveals

A recently published study by a Pakistani think-tank revealed there were at least 1,000 Al-Qaeda suspects picked up in Pakistan over the past four years.

The study, conducted by the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, based on monitoring media reports, disputed the official figure, of 660 detainees, given previously by the Pakistani government:

“Pakistani security agencies arrested more than 1,000 al-Qaeda suspects between January 2002 and May 2006. Of them, 70 came from Algeria, 86 from Saudi Arabia, 20 from Morocco, 22 from the United Arab Emirates, 11 from Libya, 7 from Kuwait, 20 from Egypt, 28 from Indonesia, 18 from Malaysia, and 36 from the West Asian countries. They also included 18 citizens of Western countries: 5 from the United States, 2 from Australia, and 11 from the United Kingdom. They also included an unknown number of French and German citizens.�

The study excluded the Afghani and Pakistani suspects nabbed by the security forces.

There were reports since the start of the manhunt for al-Qaeda suspects that the Pakistani intelligence services were exaggerating the importance of many of the detained Arab detainees, to appease the US and gain more financial and political support for General Pervez Musharraf’s regime. There were occasions too when the Pakistanis handed the Americans ordinary Arabs, not involved in politics, as “high value al-Qaeda targets.�

Pakistan was also the destination for several rendition flights, in and out, that ferried Islamist terror suspects to interrogation centers in the Middle East and other locations.

Egyptian Police Sexually Abuses Pro-Democracy Detainee

The two Youth for Change activists, Mohamed el-Sharqawi and Karim el-Sha’er, arrested yesterday by plain clothes security, were brutally tortured and sexually abused, say their lawyers and fellow activists who managed to see the two last night at the State Security Prosecutor’s office.

Sharqawi was kidnapped, according to accounts by lawyers and activists as he was leaving the Press Syndicate on Thursday afternoon, roughly 5pm. Plainclothes security agents and thugs grabbed Sharqawi in Abdel Khaleq Tharwat St., beat him, and shoved him in a car, which took him to the Qasr el-Nil Police Station. Shortly after, his fellow activist Karim el-Sha’er was leaving the syndicate in the private car of Dina Samak, a six-month pregnant journalist with the BBC, and the wife of Ibrahim el-Sahary, a leftist activist who’s currently locked up in Tora prison with other pro-democracy activists.

Dina Samak called me last night, in a state of total shock and trauma, to say her car, was followed by a taxi, as soon as she got out the syndicate’s garage. The taxi cut the road in front of her. Plainclothes security came out it, and were joined by others thugs standing by. They started hitting Dina’s car till they smashed the windows, dragged Sha’er out of it with a doze of beatings. There were other journalists too in the car, Jihan Shaaban, Ahmad Salah and Dina Gameel. All were assaulted. Samak was taken to the Judges’ Club for medical aid. “They (security) have reached such a low level, that I feel we are cattle, not human beings,� Dina told me. “The sexual abuse, the torture, the detentions won’t stop us from overthrowing this rotten regime.�

[You can get pictures of the attack on Wael Abass’s website. He also recorded a video testimony (in Arabic) with Dina and Jihan.]

Sha’er was shoved in a car and taken to Qasr el-Nil Police Station, where he and Sharqawi were blindfolded and handcuffed. They were brutally tortured, according to their lawyers. Sharqawi was also sodomized according to the lawyers and Kefaya statement. Later they were taken to the State Security Prosecutor’s office in Heliopolis. Those who saw them last night, including leftist activist Salma Said, told me the two boys were “bruised, in total shambles. There is not a single place in their bodies which does not have a red or blue mark.�

I spoke with the activists’ lawyer who managed to see them finally in the night, after initial refusal of legal access by the prosecutor. The boys refused to be interrogated, and requested to be transferred to a hospital and to be examined by the Forensic Medical Authorities to prove the torture. The prosecutor refused to transfer them to a hospital, refused to allow a woman doctor who was with the lawyer to provide medical aid for them, and ruled the two boys were to remain in police custody for 15 days. They were taken to Tora Prison, where other pro-democracy detainees are incarcerated. The request for examination by the Forensic Medical Authorites, if granted, won’t happen before Saturday, since today Friday is the official weekend holiday in Egypt.

O (Muslim) Brothers, Where Art Thou?

One of the big “disappointments,” if you can call it such, about yesterday’s 25 May demo in Cairo was that the Muslim Brotherhood was no-show. That meant that, aside from the 300 judges that stood silently in front of their Club to demand judicial independence, there were only a few hundred leftists activists in Central Cairo. I haven’t heard about what happened in other areas of Cairo, or in the provinces, so there may be a lot more people out elsewhere, including Brothers. If the Brothers had come to Central Cairo, there would have been thousands on the streets as during the last few Thursdays.

Activist friends tell me they heard late on Wednesday night that the MB was not showing up. It’s not clear why — maybe this is a sign to the regime that they are open to collaboration rather than being locked in to confrontation like Kifaya, or maybe they didn’t want more bloodshed, violence and mass arrests of their cadres. Either way, it did show that the MB is not a reliable partner of Kifaya activists. It may be that the Kifaya people’s strategy is wrong and that the MB is right to led the Judges stand by themselves, without various political groups surrounding them and tainting their actions. I suspect, though, that it had more to do with a self-preservation instinct among the MB, especially after some senior leaders were arrested the previous Thursday. Has anyone noticed that whenever the MB insists on making a big show on the street, spokesman Essam Al Erian gets arrested and then the MB starts behaving? Same thing happened last year.

In other news, yesterday three Muslim Brotherhood MPs met with the political officer of the European Union delegation in Cairo. According to press reports (in Al Masri Al Youm), the meeting was at the request of the European Commission. I believe it marks the first meeting (rather than casual encounter) of an EU official with the MB. Mid-level Western diplomats, aside from US ones, routinely have meetings with the MB for information gathering — is this different? The fact that it was requested from Brussels is also interesting, especially that in many ways the EU has been more militant about pushing democratization in Egypt than individual EU member states. This has largely been due to the awareness-raising work of EU parliamentarians such as Emma Bonino, the Italian Radical Party leader, who has been frequently visiting Cairo for the past four years and even started learning Arabic. I find her politics bizarre, but when she talks about the need democracy in the Arab world, she puts her money where her mouth is. I do wish the Radical Party didn’t advocate EU membership for Israel, though.

Meanwhile, the NDP protests that it would never, never engage in a dialogue with the Muslim Brotherhood because it’s against the law. I suspect Egypt also never had sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.

One more thing: a paper quoted “a high-level diplomatic source” as saying Egypt won’t be sending a security contingent to Palestine (presumably to “protect” Mahmoud Abbas). My first thought: OMG the Egyptians are sending a security contingent to Palestine! At least they’re considering it. The Egyptian FM has been snubbing the Palestinan FM lately, and the Egyptians have made some (unfounded, or at least they’re not sharing the evidence) noise about links between the Sinai bombings and Palestine. Ever servile, Egypt is busily trying to help out with the coming, engineered, fall of the Hamas government.

Sandmonkey: random quotes from 25 May demo

Some of them are very touching, and others are very funny. (Especially Josh’s quote about Abdel Kuddous.) Link.

“Tell your foreign friends to get away from here. That it’s not safe for them. That within the next 10 minutes I can’t gurantee their safety”
A plainclothed state-security agent to me

” They say they are not going anywhere. That they are not scared. They have been to Aghanistan and Iraq. You think that you can scare them after that?”
My reply to him

“Loving this country in this day and age is a crime. They have made loving this country a crime. Curse them”
A random guy on the street

“The MB are defintely not showing up!”
“Well, there is Mohamed Abdul Kuddous over there”
“Yeah, but he doesn’t count. He will protest anything!”
Josh from the arabist and me

Mubarak says protests “evidence of democracy”

Where does he get the balls?

Rallies ‘evidence of democracy’
2006-05-23 09:12:47

Cairo – President Hosni Mubarak lashed out at coverage of Cairo street protests in which more than 600 Egyptians were beaten and arrested, calling the rallies “evidence of democracy” and coverage of them “libel and blasphemy”.

Mubarak said: “Continuation (of the protests) is evidence of democracy”, adding that he was surprised by some media coverage.

For the past three weeks, international media had shown footage of young activists being beaten in downtown Cairo in broad daylight by plainclothes police.

Someone poison his molokhiya already.