The State Security Prosecutor is interrogating an Al-Jazeera reporter on charges of “possessing material that harms national security and tarnishes the country’s image.”
Howeida Taha was doing a documentary on torture in the Arab World. She had recorded testimonies of torture victims and had videos of police brutality. Police stopped her at the airport on 8 January while leaving for Doha, and confiscated 50 videotapes, according to Al-Jazeera’s website that also said the reporter had notified previously the Interior Ministry of her project and received the required permissions.
Howeida will show up today (Sunday) morning again at the State Security Prosecutor’s office in el-Tagammu el-Khames district in Nasr City for further investigation.
On another front, yesterday’s Al-Fagr reported that Police Captain Islam Nabih is enjoying a comfortable status in “prison.” Islam, who turned out to be the son of former Security Director of Sohag Governorate Nabih Abdel Salam, is currently locked up at an officers’ detention facility attached to the Giza Security Forces camp. He spends his day, according to Al-Fagr, hanging out at the court yard in front of the officers’ bureaus, and then spends the night at his cell. He has a mobile phone, wears his own jeans and personal plainclothes, not the white prison uniform, and receives his police friends who stay up as late as 1am with him, Al-Fagr added.
In other developments, Human Rights Watch issued a statement yesterday, voicing similar concerns to those made by Amnesty International and lawyer Nasser Amin, about the risk of torture Emad Kabeer is facing in prison.
UPDATE: HR-INFO condemned the crackdown on Al-Jazeera, in a statement today.
UPDATE: Taha was released on a 10,000 Egyptian-pound ($1,754) bail.
What can we do as individuals?
Write to the minister of Internal Affairs in Egypt? (if so, please let us know the name and the address to whom we should write.
Thanks for the solidarity… Contact info could be found here…
https://web.archive.org/web/20110724230958/http://www.ahrla.org/en/enprs/enlst/ep10-1-07.html
And as individuals, you can spread the word, by forwarding links and news about torture to your friends and contacts. If you are in a country, where your govt doesn’t sodomize one’s right to demonstrate, then hold protests in front of Egyptian embassies calling for prosecution of torturers and halt to the mistreatment of detainees.
If you are in Egypt, then keep an eye on any abuses you read or hear about, and don’t hesitate to pass the info to HR organizations or bloggers involved in the anti-torture campaign. Also, try to attend political protests and meetings (some of which publicized on this blog, and others) organized to protest police brutality or to show solidarity with victims of torture. Attending Sarando’s peasants trial on 22 January could be a good start..
https://arabawy.org/2007/01/17/support-sarando-peasants/