“The dogs of Ibn Saud”

In what I assume is a response to Monday’s broadcast on Saudi television about the five star treatment inside Saudi penitentiaries, I found this statement on a Saudi Islamist message board today. It is purportedly from prisoners in Alisha Prison in Saudi Arabia, and was posted to Al Qalaa Web site by a group or an individual, called “The Beast of the Peninsula” (Wihish Al Gezira). Here is a partial and very rough translation of their complaints about the conditions inside a Saudi prison, which they say is filled with “oppression, torture, and terror”:

– Sleep deprivation for periods of up 10 to 20 days.
– Prolonged detentions without any investigation, or knowing why they were arrested, or what the charges are against them.
– Forcing prisoners to confess to crimes that they have no connection to, and that there is no evidence of, or any witnesses to. Confessions are extracted under the threat or practice of psychological and physical torture, sleep deprivation, denying visitation rights, or any communications with the outside for months and sometimes over a year.
– Interrogating the wives of wanted men without her male custodian being present, and using bad manners and behavior with them.
– Being beaten, and insulted with dirty words, being bound and blindfolded for upwards of two weeks and not even being allowed to go to the bathroom or pray.
– Putting prisoners in a black box 1.85 m x .90 m, bound and blindfolded, forbidden to say a word. Sleep deprivation to the point of insanity where people actually have had to be transported to the hospital as a result. Some people have spent nearly a year in these cages in order to force confessions.
– Cameras on the prisoners 24 hours a day.
– Bad lighting which hurts the eyesight and causes depression.
– Prisoners in bad health are deprived medical attention.
– No change of clothes or bed linens for long periods of time.
– The prisoner does not get any of his requests no matter how minor unless he carries out prolonged hunger strikes and sit-ins, and then come only empty promises.
– If the prisoner asks to have his case reviewed, or requests to contact his family, he is insulted and intimidated.
– Inmates are terrified with random transfers to other prisons and solitary confinement.

Prisoner Demands:
– Taking action on our cases that have stagnated for a long time without any judicial rulings.
– Allowing us to contact our families to inform them that we are in prison so they can stop worrying, and to allow visits.
– Improve the living and health conditions of the prisoners, and better treatment of the prisoners.
– The investigation of those who have not had their cases examined, and no longer ignoring them in a cell without any access to legal procedures.

A follow-up comment on the same message board reads: “The prisoners of Tel Aviv are better off and there is more concern for them than the dogs of Ibn Saud.”

A few Gamal quotes from Al Misry Al Yom

Today’s Al Misry Al Yom reports that at a press conference yesterday following a meeting of the policies secretariat Gamal Mubarak denied that he spoke on behalf of Egypt during his travels abroad, and insisted he only spoke on behalf of the National Democratic Party.

A quick thought: It seems worth noting the existance of the debate around the acceptable parameters of Gamal Mubarak’s portfolio. It seems that it is not acceptable for him to speak on behalf of Egypt, although, as head of the Policies Secretariat, he can speak on behalf of the NDP. In practice, is there really a difference between the NDP and the government? Mr. Stacher has an interesting theory about the importance of the foreign policy portfolio to Gamal and gang. Perhaps he’ll share it with us.

When asked about Monday’s demonstration against the President, Gamal is quoted as saying: “Every faction of society has the right to express their opinion, whether in Parliament, or in the street, in accordance with the law, and this is a matter we want to stress to the Egyptian people, whether their opinion agrees with the government and the party, or not.”

Smooth talking and saying the right things.

Gamal also added that there would be a dialog with the opposition before the political reform law is submitted to Parliament and that the party has no intention of opposing any constructive ammendments.

So there’s definitely going to be a political reform law? As for the dialog with the opposition bit, it seems pretty hackneyed by this point.

On Israeli-Egyptian relations he had this to say: “We have a vision about our relationships in the Arab world and the neighboring countries, like Israel and Turkey, which indicates that Egypt is committed to a peace agreement, and it has an active role in the region, that it uses to advance its interests and Arab issues.”

This jail is so cosy!

Brian Whitaker has a funny story about how Saudi Arabia had broadcast a documentary about its most famous jail to convince Islamist rebels to turn themselves in:

“I swear to God, they [the jailers] are nicer than our parents,” said Othman al-Amri, once No 21 on the kingdom’s list of most-wanted terror suspects.

The programme, broadcast on Saudi television late on Monday, included brief footage from inside the jail, showing clean facilities and beds lined next to one another.

It signalled a new effort by the authorities to encourage militants to give themselves up and to allay suspicions that they would be ill treated if they did so. But persuading them to opt for al-Haer may prove difficult.

In September at least 67 prisoners died and 20 others were injured, along with three guards, when fire swept through part of the jail.

I think they might not be so easily convinced.

WashPost Editorial

Yesterday the Post published an editorial entitled “Straight Talk”.

It seems to getting some play over here. People keep mentioning it to me.

Frankly, it seems a bit hostile and unrepresentative of the current situation. Also dispite criticizing the US Admin for not financially backing reform, the blame was laid on the regimes.

Also, I am unsure if the whole civil society orgs speaking “in the presence of the regimes while the most powerful nation in the world” watched is all that important or translatable into future reform.

Interested to see what you all think

NCHR and Emergency law

Partially an addendum to Issandr’s note on the NCHR and the Emergency law

Just had a meeting with Bahay al-Din Hassan of the Cairo Institute for the Study of HR and Egypt’s national council for HR (NCHR). He told me there are two memos are going to the president.
1) repealing Emergency law. He said there was almost a revolt by “some” members frustrated that the vote went as it did last April (24 against discussing to approach the gov to repeal EL, 3 in favor). To date there has been no reaction from the government/president. I asked him if he expected one. He responded, “the government does not respond to the most basic complaint – really mundane – things, why will they respond to this?”

2) The NCHR annual report. Contrary to things I have seen in the press, the report is not ready. Bahay said it was not going to be released until February and not a “single word” has been written yet.

He also said that he is not the only one on the council who is disappointed with the NCHR’s performance and everyday it loses the ability to assert itself.

More will follow on this next month.

Loose ends

It’s been a hectic week, so I am putting various bits and pieces I’ve noted over the past week here with little commentary:

  • Visit Daoud Kuttab’s homepage and his blog, which contains an archive of his writings and other material. Kuttab, whom I had the opportunity to meet in Cairo in late 2002, is the Arab pioneer of internet radio. Here is an article he wrote on the need for more alternative Arab media, and here’s an article on his pet project, Ammannet — a website and radio station. Radio could be a powerful medium in the Arab world, but in most countries it is restricted to state-owned stations and perhaps a couple of commercial ones that avoid anything controversial. A Malian journalist told me a while back that in his impoverished West African mostly Muslim country of Mali has dozens of independent radio stations. Embarrassing.
  • Amr Hamzawi had an article in the Daily Star on why Egypt’s ruling party’s reform image is a sham. Hellme didn’t like it though.
  • The Likudnik Middle East Quarterly remembers Hume Horan, noted State Department Arabist, although I noticed they chose not to call him an Arabist but rather an “Arabic linguist” so as to not confuse him with those nasty, er, State Department Arabists. In Robert Kaplan’s The Arabists, that subtle smear job on American diplomats who specialized in the Middle East and weren’t pro-Israel ideologues, Horan comes out as something as a hero for his role in the airlift of the Falasha Jews in Sudan — which is probably why he’s so well liked over at the MEQ. I’m not sure what Horan’s politics were, especially as he published in the MEQ, but he was certainly an important American diplomat working in the region.
  • Kareem Fahim, Egyptian-American globetrotting journalist for the Village Voice, keeps a blog on their site.
  • Mahmoud Abbas calls yet again for the end of armed struggle in Palestine, but has nothing to offer in exchange. In the meantime, military operations like the one carried out a few days ago offer a much better model of resistance than the suicide bombings, so why do they occur so little?
  • Sami Awad offers three strategies for non-violent Palestinian resistance: strong leadership, continuous protests and strong international campaigning. Easier said than done.
  • The NYT profiles Seif Al Islam Qadhafi. Like in another profile by the Financial Times a few months ago, he sounds deranged. Not as much as his father, though.
  • Europe’s counter-terrorism chief says that European and Arab radicals are being trained in insurgent-run camps in Iraq.
  • Egypt’s National Council for Human Rights has asked the government to cancel the Emergency Law that has restrained political life for over a quarter of a century. I won’t say more about this now because some more in-depth analysis will come soon.
  • Adam Morrow looks at the Wafaa Konstantin affair amidst larger sectarian tensions in Egypt.
  • Rami Khouri talks about the recent Dubai conference on Arab reform.
  • France has banned Al Manar, Hizbullah’s satellite TV station, for being anti-Semitic. (Update: CNN reports the US government about to declare Al Manar a “terrorist organization.” Not sure why they need to differentiate from Hizbullah which they already consider a terrorist organization.

    • Bush delaying new AHDR

    I’d never thought I’d write this, but Thomas Friedman actually has something interesting to say in his latest column! Friedman is revealing, for the first time I think, that the Bush administration is behind the delay of the release of the third installment of the Arab Human Development Report, which is on governance:

    Then I started to hear disturbing things – that the Bush team saw a draft of the Arab governance report and objected to the prologue, because it was brutally critical of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the Israeli occupation. This prologue constitutes some 10 percent of the report. While heartfelt, it’s there to give political cover to the Arab authors for their clear-eyed critique of Arab governance, which is the other 90 percent of the report.

    But the Bush team is apparently insisting that language critical of America and Israel be changed – as if language 10 times worse can’t be heard on Arab satellite TV every day. And until it’s changed, the Bush folks are apparently ready to see the report delayed or killed altogether. And they have an ally. The government of Egypt, which is criticized in the report, also doesn’t want it out – along with some other Arab regimes.

    So there you have it: a group of serious Arab intellectuals – who are neither sellouts nor bomb throwers – has produced a powerful analysis, in Arabic, of the lagging state of governance in the Arab world. It is just the sort of independent report that could fuel the emerging debate on Arab reform. But Bush officials, along with Arab autocrats, are holding it up until it is modified to their liking – even if that means it won’t appear at all.

    It makes you weep.

    Incredible.