Tag: egypt

Two detainees released; three receive 15 more days; fate of five Tora hungerstrikers unknown

The State Security Prosecutor ordered today the release of two democracy activists, and renewed the detention of three others for 15 more days.

Nael Abdel Hamid and Ihab Mahmoud, who were picked up on April 24, were told by the State Security prosecutor they were free to go, though it’s expected their actual release won’t happen before tomorrow. Ahmad Maher, Yasser Isma3il and 3adel Fawzi, were ordered by the State Security prosecutor to remain in Tora prison for another 15 days.

Mohamed el-Sharqawi was also referred to the State Security prosecutor in Heliopolis today. Twelve rights lawyers were waiting for Sharqawi, but only two attended the interrogation session with him: Ahmad Seif al-Islam, director of the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, (and father of detained blogger Alaa) and activist lawyer Amir Salem. The lawyers said they, as well as their client, were expecting an investigation into his torture would take place today, but they were surprised to find out the prosecutor wanted to interrogate Sharqawi only about his refusal to be referred to the forensic medical authorities on Thursday.

“Sharqawi was solid,� said Ahmad Seif. “He refused to be interrogated by the chief State Security prosecutor, who is the same person who interrogated him on his first night of arrest, and who refused to provide him with medical help. Sharqawi protested, and asked to be investigated by a magistrate. We stayed in the room for only ten minutes, after which Sharqawi was returned to Tora once more.�

On another front, news is trickling from Tora prison that the detainees in Mahkoum Tora have ended their hunger-strike on Thursday. There is no news about the fate of the five detainees who were moved to solitary confinement in Mazra3et Tora. Lawyers Seif al-Islam and Gamal 3eid expressed their concern about the five, after they heard they were badly beaten by the Interior Ministry’s Special Operations officers who supervised their transfer. Gamal Abdel Fattah, according to the two lawyers, was seen by other detainees being brutally assaulted.

It is clear the government is confused about how to handle the current situation. The abuse scandal snowballed its way to the regime’s backers in the West, who regard it as too much of a bad PR, and sure the Egyptian government wants to control the damage, but what can it do? Releasing the detainees, means dissent is back on the streets. Keeping them in prison, means continued bad publicity for Mubarak abroad. So, the brilliant security impresarios are coming up with a compromise: release some, renew the detention of others, and re-detain those who were released but haven’t learned their lesson, like Sharqawi and Sha3er.

Deja vu at Foggy Bottom

Blah blah blah… deeply concerned… blah blah blah… troubled… blah blah blah:

QUESTION: On Egypt. Do you have an update on the case of Mr. Sharkawi? Have you talked to the Egyptian Government about his situation?

MR. CASEY: Yeah. I do have a little bit. I know this is a subject that we talked about briefly the other day. And as you know as a matter of general principle, we’re deeply concerned by reports of continuing arrests and repression of civil society activists by the Egyptian Government. But we are troubled by the recent reports that Mohammed el-Sharkawi as well as Karim Shaer, another civil society activist, were arrested. And during their arrest and detention were tortured in custody and then denied independent medical treatment. If those allegations are true, that would certainly be a violation of Egypt’s own laws as well as accepted international human rights standards and practices.

The Embassy in Cairo has raised this issue with Egyptian officials. And first and foremost, we’re urging them to provide any and all necessary medical treatment to Mr. Sharkawi and Mr. Shaer and to thoroughly investigate these cases and any others like them. Certainly, if the allegations are true, what we want to see happen is that the Egyptian Government should take immediate steps to punish those responsible and put into place institutional measures to prevent those kinds of incidents from occurring. And as you know, we continue not only in these cases but in others as well to urge the Egyptian Government to protect the rights of their citizens to assemble and speak out peacefully. And we’ve noted our concerns about, as you know, a number of the other cases as well.

I’m deeply concerned my neighbor may be torturing his son with those tools I lent him. I wonder if I should do anything about it. Oh no wait, maybe he’ll stop if I lend him my lawnmower too.

New study on FGM

A new medical study on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) commissioned by the World Health Organization adds new reasons — as if they were needed — to condemn the practice:

WHO’s study, to be published Friday in The Lancet medical journal, found that women who have suffered the most serious form of genital mutilation have a 70 percent greater chance of experiencing post-childbirth hemorrhage compared with women who weren’t mutilated. In countries where childbirth mortality rates for women are already high, “this particular process is practically a death sentence for them,” Phumaphi said.

Children of genitally mutilated women also are at greater risk, the study found. Depending on the severity of the mutilation, neonatal death rates for these children range from 15 to 55 percent higher compared to other babies.

The above is lifted from this WHO press release, but you can read the whole technical study from The Lancet, which also has a commentary on it. One of the study’s main findings is that arguments from “mild cutting” or sterilized operations instead of traditional ones — which are carried out in the name of cultural sensitivity — still leave women more at risk from complications during birth-giving and also puts their children at risk.

I know next to nothing about medicine or public health, so if someone wants to leave a more cogent explanation of the study, please do so in the comments. I thought the study was worth pointing out, particularly as Egypt is one of the places where FGM still routinely takes place.

Update: The NYT has more.

The ashes of the Bush doctrine

There was a fire today at a community center started by Ayman Nour. There is no reason to believe the fire was anything more than accidental, but this was a good line by Nour’s wife, Gameela Ismail:

The board of the Nour Association, which ran the centre, has decided to send ashes from the fire to US President George W Bush “as a gift for his announced support for democracy in Egypt”, Ismail said.

Ismail and Nour’s two sons, now in their early teenage years, will have graduated high school by the time their father is released from jail. They must be really appreciative of US support for democracy in Egypt.

Adhaf Soueif campaigns for Alaa

And not just because he’s her nephew. From the New York Review of Books:

To the Editors:

During the last month Egyptian state security forces have arrested close to eight hundred citizens for (peacefully) demonstrating solidarity with Egyptian judges demanding the independence of the judiciary (see www .baheyya.blogspot.com). Since then, thirteen have been released. Among the young activists still in custody in Tora jail is my nephew, Alaa Abd El-Fatah. Because he is a prominent computer man and blogger he has become the centerpiece of the campaign to free all the detainees. The following is a letter of support for him. I hope New York Review readers will consider signing and circulating it.

Ahdaf Soueif
London, England

Soueif is said to have used elements of the story of how Alaa’s parent met each other in her novel In the Eye Of The Sun. Alaa’s father, Ahmed Seif Al Islam, was a communist activist in the 1960s and a frequent guest of Nasser’s jails. As a political prisoner, he got occasional visits home on the understanding that he would come back. He decided to run away with his young wife, Alaa’s mother (activist and professor Leila Soueif, Adhaf’s sister **updated from comments**), and apparently fathered his first-born. When he voluntarily returned to the prison weeks later, the story goes, the prison guards congratulated him on being a future father.

Thanks to Moorishgirl for the link.

Updates from Tora…

Gamal 3abdel 3aziz 3eid, Mohamed el-Sharqawi’s lawyer, said his client resisted an attempt, Thursday 9am, by the prison authorities to transfer him to the forensic medical department, for a second visit. Sharqawi, according to 3eid, told the security officials he was already referred to the forensic medical authorities once, last Sunday, and did not comprehend why he would be referred again.

3eid said his client, whose body is healing from the torture marks, suspected the security wanted to destroy the original report made on Sunday by the forensics, (the report hasn’t been disclosed yet to 3eid) and replace it with a new one that does not bear witness to his clients’ treatment in police custody.

In another development, the US ambassador in Cairo asked the Egyptian government to “explain its side of the story,â€� in remarks made at an American Chamber of Commerce meeting on Wednesday. The government explained “its side of the story,” in an interior ministry statement on Thursday, saying no torture happened, and that Sharqawi and Karim el-Sha3er were arrested for blocking the traffic. The ambassador has yet to say which “side of the story” he buys…

British journalists to demonstrate in solidarity with Cairo colleagues

Another event is planned in London for international solidarity with democracy activists in Egypt. I received a press release from the British National Union of Journalists, calling for a demo, outside the BBC World Service building, Bush House, Aldwych, London, from 12 noon to 1pm on Monday 5 June. The press release denounced the attacks on reporters in Cairo, and mentioned specifically Dina Samak and Dina Gameel of the BBC Arabic Service, who were assaulted on Thursday May 25.

“I was president of Egypt”

This may seem rather strange, but I own a small collection of 1950s-era portraits of Muhammad Naguib, Egypt’s first president (1952-1954.) Few people remember him, and in fact most assume that Gamal Abdel Nasser was Egypt’s first president. In fact, Nasser was the strongman behind the coup and Naguib, who had been the head of the army under the monarchy, took on the post to assure a smooth transition. Nasser ended up overthrowing him and jailing him (in a psychiatric hospital) and then assumed the presidency himself.

Muhamed Naguib Time Cover-1

I don’t know enough about Naguib to say what would have happened if he had consolidated power at the expense of Nasser, but I get the feeling it would have been a less transformative experience for Egypt (particularly for the social mobility that took place under Nasser, bringing a lot of poor people out of their misery) and also a less totalitarian experience. Naguib resembles those weak Arab military strongmen seen in Syria and Iraq in the 1950s — most of them coming out of the old system and with their “class interests” associated with the bourgeoisie rather than the petty middle class. Some say Naguib was committed to restoring multi-party democracy after the 1952 coup and introducing a more democratic constitution than Egypt has ever had since. Nasser, who craved power more than anything else (but, in contrast to his successors, seems to have not been corrupt, even if tolerated corruption around him), would not stand for it.
When he was released (in 1970, I think) from his house arrest, Naguib wrote a book titled “I was president of Egypt.” I always thought that title was full of pathos, as if Naguib had to remind people, in the context of Nasser’s megalomaniac personality cult, that he had been president.

What makes me write all of this is this cool cover from Time magazine posted on Fustat.

Al Destour: interview with a State Security officer

A translated version of an interview with Walid Dessouki that appeared in the independent weekly Al Destour is over at The Skeptic:

(Journalist) El Balshi – Let us go back to state security. Is it true that you have files for everybody?

Dessouki – We have 70 million files. But it is not always the same. Even young children have files (laughs).

El Balshi – And the journalists?

Dessouki – We have files for all journalists. But we focus on certain people and there are others whom do not care about because they are in their own world. Not all journalists are alike. You in Dostour of course have a very special status.

El Balshi – Don’t you feel bad about the people you beat. Don’t you ever reconsider and think about joining the people?

Dessouki – That is good idea (Laughs). Why is there no “people for change”? We have journalists for change” and engineers for change”. Who is left?

El Balshi – State security officers for change! What do you think? Are you considering?

Dessouki – (Laughs). Anyway folks. Don’t forget. We shall see each other again next Thursday. And the one after that. The one after will be a day. But again I tell you whoever wants to demonstrate should look for somewhere else to stay the night.

Surreal.

Police crackdown on anti-torture demo

I got out of the cab in front of the ultra-posh Four Seasons Hotel, on the Nile Cornish, by 5pm. The southeast side of the Four Seasons faces a narrow street, where Qasr el-Nil Police Station lies. Operating from an old shabby villa in Garden City built in the pre-republican age, next to the Indonesian embassy, is the police force in charge of security in downtown Cairo, Garden City and Zamalek. And it was in this affluent neighborhood that security agents took rounds in torturing Karim el-Sha3er and Mohamed el-Sharqawi, and sexually abusing the latter on the evening of May 25, 2006. Rights activists had called for a stand by representatives of human rights organizations in front of the police station today.

I arrived, not knowing what to expect. Deep down, I had been hoping the government would be a bit embarrassed about the growing torture scandal, that they might allow a small group of lawyers and professors to protest in front of the police station, and allow reporters like myself to do their job.

My hopes were dashed right away. I saw a group of around three dozen rights activists and lawyers carrying banners, shouting against torture, while at least 200 plainclothes thugs, uniformed and plainclothes security officers including two generals—add to that a phalanx of black-clad riot police conscripts, worked hardly to prevent them from marching on the Qasr el-Nil Police Station. The protestors were violently pushed by the thugs and the officers away. Women doctors from the Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence were shoved away. Continue reading Police crackdown on anti-torture demo