Tag: Activism

There is reportedly a bureau at State Security police called the “CounterCommunism and Civil Society Organizations Bureau.” Its officers are assigned with monitoring and cracking down on Marxists and left-wing rights activists. Some of them have been involved in several torture cases of leftist activists, the most recent of which has been Mohamed el-Sharqawi.
There’s hardly a civil society activist that hasn’t received at least a “phone call” from them. Sometimes it’s an “invitation for coffee,” other times it’s direct threats… Whether it’s this or that, the aim obviously is intimidation.
I met today my friend Emad Mubarak, director of the recently launched Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression, and the brother of the late legendary left wing lawyer Hisham Mubarak.
Emad was one of the main figures in the Egyptian leftist students scene in the 1990s, and was subject to several incidents of police brutality and detentions. Since his graduation from Ain Shams University’s Faculty of Law, he’s been working as a rights lawyer. Emad has been involved in defending Leftist and Muslim Brothers student activists, labor struggles, and campaigns for rights of detainees from all political tendencies.
Emad met me with a big smile, “I finally received the phone call.”
What do you mean? I asked.
“State Security called me yesterday,” he said.
“What did they want?” I asked.
“They wanted to say Mabrouk (Congrats)!” he said.
“What do you mean?! Are you joking?”
“No no, I swear.”

(Photo above: Emad Mubarak, Director of Association for Freedom of Thought & Expression)

Emad went on narrating the conversation he had with the State Security officer.
SS: “Who is on the phone?”
Emad: “Are you kidding? You are the one who called. Who is it?”
SS: “This is Ahmad S… from State Security.”
Emad: “How Can I help you?”
SS: “We found your number on the internet, and it was mentioned as a contact number for the Association for the Freedom of Thought and Expression. We wanted to know who this number belonged to.”
Emad: “You mean you have my number, but you can’t get my name from the telephone directory?! Anyways, my name is Emad Mubarak.”
SS: “Oooooh! Emad Mubarak? The brother of Hisham Mubarak? May God bless his soul. He was very respectable.”
Emad: “Hisham was indeed respected by everybody, especially you!” (Hisham had lost one of his ears’ hearing capability, due to brutal torture by SS in 1989.) “Anyways, what do you want?”
SS: “Nothing we just called in to say mabrouk for launching your association.”
Emad: “Thanks, anything else?”
SS: “No, No. We just wanted to say mabrouk.”
Emad: “So do you work at Lazoughli (State Security’s HQ in Downtown Cairo) or Gaber Ibn Hayan (SS HQ in Giza)?”
SS: “Gaber Ibn Hayyan”
(Emad knew the officer was lying, as the number that appeared on his mobile started with a 76…., which meant the caller was making the call from downtown.
Emad: “So you must be ….’s student? (Emad dropped in the name of one of the notorious officers there.)
SS: “Oh, Ah, Yeah, I know him.”
Emad: “Ok, anything else?”
SS: “No, we just wanted to say mabrouk!”
Emad: “ok, Bye!”

Emad then hung up.

“What a waste of my time and their time,” he told me when I met him today. “They have nothing better else to do. I wonder when they’ll invite me for coffee. I bet soon.”

I traveled to Al-Arish last weekend, to do some research on Islamic militancy in Sinai. I’ll spare you the horror stories of torture I heard from relatives of terror suspects. I may post something about it in the future, but for now you can check out HRW’s report on the security crackdowns against Sinai Bedouins following the October 2004 Taba bombings: Mass Arrests and Torture in Sinai.

While I was there, I decided to visit the Tagammu Party office, located in downtown Arish, to follow up on the case of detained Kefaya activist Hassan Abdallah, the coordinator of Sinai Youth For Change.

State Security agents broke into Hassan’s house in Arish last month, and kidnapped him. Later, they issued death threats against his two brothers Wael and Mohamed who have taken refuge in the Tagammu office, and have been staging a continuous sit-in.

At the office, I was met by veteran leftist activist Ashraf Ayoub, who’s been civil rights and pro-Palestinian campaigner in Arish since 1984, his 19-year-old son and Sinai Youth For Change activist Shadi, Hassan’s two brothers, mother and sister.

Hassan and his family joined the Tagammu Party during the post-Taba bombings security crackdowns. Hassan’s mother, Kawthar, and his sister Soheir who works as a school teacher, led spontaneous demos by the mothers and women relatives of detainees to protest the widespread torture and kidnappings by State Security agents. They teamed up later with veteran activists like Ashraf Ayoub, and decided to become active members in the left-wing party branch.

“The threats never stopped,” Kawthar said. “State Security Colonel Essam Amer and Major Hussein Mansour told us several times to leave the party, but we refused.”

Hassan’s brother Wael, 22-year-old English literature graduate, had been detained by security 29 October, 2004, part of the mass crackdown on Arish. He was kept for three months at the State Security bureau in Arish, and another three months in Damanhour prison. He told me he was brutally tortured by interrogators, who stripped him off his clothes, threatened him with rape, suspended him from the ceiling with his hands tied to the back, applied electric shocks on several parts of his body—before releasing him saying, “Ma3lesh (never mind), you are not involved.”

The other brother Mohamed, a 32 year old school teacher, was also picked up by State Security on 7 December 2004, and detained for three months, where he received similar treatment.

The younger brother Hassan, attracted the security’s attention, while chanting “Down with Hosni Mubarak” during pro-Lebanese resistance demos in Arish last July.

“State Security officers phoned Hassan several times, with threats and intimidation to leave Tagammu and quit activism,” his mother Kawthar said.

Finally, State Security agents stormed the family’s house on the dawn of 7 September, while Hassan was asleep, his mother recalled. “He was asleep, in his underwear, when they grabbed him. He shouted requesting to see a judicial warrant. They told him, ‘We are State Security. We don’t need a warrant.'”

Hassan was taken in his underwear and thrown into the police van. He was not allowed to take his eyeglasses with him. His two brothers Wael and Mohamed were present in the house, but security agents were not interested in them. On the following day, State Security Major Hussein Mansour phoned in with more threats if the Abdallahs don’t cease their activism, and requested the two brothers to show up the SS Arish bureau for questioning, and to “bring clothes for their naked brother,” the mother said. The two refused, saying the officer’s actions were illegal. Fearing for their safety, the Abdallahs took refuge in the Tagammu office, and said if SS wanted them they could come and get them from the office. For a week, security forces used to raid their empty house every night and smash its furniture. They also told the mother several times her two sons were “considered fugitives now, and if they are seen anywhere in the streets they will be killed.”

Hassan was kept in State Security Arish bureau for a week, then he was transferred to Bourg Al-Arab prison, still without his clothes or eyeglasses–just his underwear, according to his mother, as State Security officers refused to receive the clothes and food his sister and his friend Shadi Ayoub tried to bring him while he was still locked up in Arish.

Hassan has not been presented to the prosecutor still, and his two brothers are still holed up in the Tagammu office for fear of their safety

Blogger Mohamed Gamal, who posts under the name Mr. GEMYHOoOD, has been receiving threats from State Security recently.
During the last Kefaya sit-in, Gamal told me he received phone threats from State Security officers, who asked him to take down a posting, where he drew a caricature of Hosni Mubarak urinating on the map of Egypt.
Gamal refused to take it down, and continues to receive the daily phone threats. Yesterday, Gamal was on his way to the Kefaya conference at the Lawyers’ Syndicate, when he was stopped by a security agent who checked his ID, and few minutes later Gamal received another phone threat from security, that he broadcasted to his friends via the mobile phone speaker.

You can read Gamal’s account of the threats, in Arabic, here.
Ma3lesh ya Mr. GEMYHOoOD… You have all my solidarity…