Year: 2006

Attacks lead to political accusations in Egypt

Posted on By 3arabawy

From AP, by Nadia Abou El-Magd:

CAIRO, Egypt (AP)_ An alleged mob attack on women during last week’s Islamic holiday has escalated into a political fight involving President Hosni Mubarak’s regime.
Witnesses accuse police of doing nothing to protect the women as they walked on a downtown street, and democracy activists have cited the controversy as a sign that Egypt is mismanaged and corrupt.
But the government has accused the bloggers who publicized the incident of defaming the country, and some police officials have said there is no evidence that anything happened.
A handful of Internet bloggers, who said they either witnessed or spoke with eyewitnesses in downtown Cairo the nights of Oct. 23 and 24, reported that women of all ages and styles of dress were attacked by crowds of men and boys who groped them and tore their clothes, trying to remove them. Some women wore headscarves or full Islamic veils and others were with their families, the bloggers said.
“Anything that moves and smells like a female was attacked,” said Wael Abbas, a democracy activist, blogger and eyewitness, who published photographs of the alleged attacks on his blog.
Crowds of people filled Cairo’s streets on those nights to celebrate the beginning of Eid el-Fitar, the three-day holiday that marks Ramadan’s end.
But Interior Ministry officials, quoted on condition of anonymity in the Egyptian press, said they had received no complaints of such attacks, and dismissed the controversy. “We should close the file on disparaging rumors,” said one police official quoted in Al Ahram, Egypt’s biggest government daily.
The government has given no other official comment.
But an editorial in Rose el-Youssef, the staunch pro-government daily, on Tuesday carried the headline: “To what extent are they just defaming Egyptians?” The author singled out Abbas for condemnation, accusing him of fabricating a “sexual revolution downtown.”
Opposition newspapers and activists have seized on the incident to broadly criticize Mubarak’s government for a long series of grievances. A similar outcry occurred after a ferry sank in the Red Sea in February, killing more than 1,000 mostly poor laborers.
“Nothing amazes me in Egypt lately … but what happened during Eid took me back to sad surprises,” wrote Sahar el-Mougy, a female novelist and activist, in the independent daily Al-Masry Al-Youm on Monday.
While low-level harrasment of women is common in Cairo and other Egyptian cities, crime and assault reports are rare and police are pervasive _ usually on the streets in large numbers.
Some criticized the police for allegedly being more concerned with protecting Mubarak and his circle of allies than ordinary citizens, while others attacked Mubarak directly.
They are a political force in the service of the regime and not of the citizens,” said Aida Seif el-Dawla, an activist and the director of the Al-Nadim Center for the Management and Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence.
Some activists also suggested a link between the recent alleged attack and attacks on women activists and journalists during a referendum vote last year.
“It was the security forces who introduced the culture of violating women when they tore the clothes of Kifaya (an opposition group) female activists, said Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based pan-Arab daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi writing Wednesday.
Security officials have said the clashes during a 2005 referendum, held to determine whether more than one candidate would be allowed to run in Egyptian presidential elections, were between Mubarak supporters and Kifaya members and that security officials were not involved.
But Associated Press reporters at the scene then saw plainclothes agents taking instructions from both uniformed and non-uniformed government security officers.
Both Kifaya, a secular opposition movement, and Islamic opposition groups have complained of frequent organized police harrasment during political protests.
But the bloggers said the latest alleged attacks seemed to break out spontaneously among men in the crowds.
Bloggers and activists speculated that a range of factors could have inspired the attacks, including possible sexual frustration among men because sex before marriage is taboo and economic difficulties often force men to wait to marry.

Talaat Sadat sentenced to one year in prison

Posted on By 3arabawy

A military court sentenced today MP Talaat el-Sadat (nephew of Egypt’s late dictator Anwar el-Sadat) to one year in prison with hard labor, for “defaming” Egypt’s army in a TV interview where he claimed his uncle was killed in a conspiracy involving the Egyptian army, and foreign intelligence services.

Eight rights group had denounced the trial saying it’s violating the right to free speech.

UPDATE: Here’s an AP report:

Nephew of late Egyptian leader Sadat gets 1-year sentence for defaming armed forces
By NADIA ABOU EL-MAGD
CAIRO _ The nephew of the late President Anwar Sadat was sentenced to a year in prison Tuesday for defaming Egypt’s armed forces, less than a month after he gave an interview accusing Egyptian generals of masterminding his uncle’s assassination.
The unusually rapid prosecution effectively terminates Talaat Sadat’s role in parliament as an outspoken government critic.
Sadat, 52, who had accused the government of prosecuting him for political reasons, was taken into custody immediately after the verdict, said his aide, Mohsen Eid, and court officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the press.
Media were not allowed into the courtroom and Egyptian newspapers have been instructed not to report his trial, which has come under criticism from the State Department as harmful to freedom of expression.
There is no appeal against military court verdicts. Sadat’s only option is to appeal to President Hosni Mubarak.
Sadat is the second prominent political opponent of the government to be sentenced to prison within 12 months. Last December, Ayman Nour, the leading challenger in last year’s presidential elections, was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for forgery after a trial that was internationally regarded as failing to meet standards of due process.
Within minutes of the sentencing, Sadat’s supporters shouted outside the court: “This is injustice!” “This is unlawful!”
Sadat had pleaded innocent to charges of “spreading false rumors and insulting the armed forces.”
In an interview broadcast on Oct. 4, Sadat said there had been an international conspiracy to assassinate his uncle, and the conspirators included some of Anwar Sadat’s personal guards, Egyptian generals, as well as the U.S. and Israel. He did not name the generals.
“No one from the special personal protection group of the late president fired a single shot during the killing, and not one of them has been put on trial,” Sadat told the Saudi TV channel Orbit.
The day after the broadcast, Sadat was stripped of his parliamentary immunity and his trial began Oct. 11.
Anwar Sadat was shot dead by Islamic militants in the Egyptian army during a military parade in Cairo on Oct. 6, 1981. The soldiers were opposed to Sadat’s landmark peace treaty with Israel of 1979.

Clashes in Ain Shams University

Posted on By 3arabawy

Bloody clashes have been going on for the third day on the row at Ain Shams University campus in Abbassiya, as student union elections approach.

Pro-government students assaulted Muslim Brotherhood activists at the Faculty of Education at Ain Shams University, and tore down their electoral posters. The MB mobilized demos to denounce the attacks, but they were only met by violence.

Pro-government students, armed with sticks and knives, viciously attacked the Brothers, and brought into campus truckloads of Baltaggiya (criminal thugs), who have spread terror on campus.

  • Pro-government students and criminal thugs assaulted MB students in Ain Shams University's Faculty of Education, in a campaign of campus terror before student union elections (Photo ​ courtesy of​ MB students)
  • Pro-government students and criminal thugs assaulted MB students in Ain Shams University's Faculty of Education, in a campaign of campus terror before student union elections (Photo ​ courtesy of​ MB students)
  • Pro-government students and criminal thugs assaulted MB students in Ain Shams University's Faculty of Education, in a campaign of campus terror before student union elections (Photo ​ courtesy of​ MB students)
  • Pro-government students and criminal thugs assaulted MB students in Ain Shams University's Faculty of Education, in a campaign of campus terror before student union elections (Photo ​ courtesy of​ MB students)
  • Pro-government students and criminal thugs assaulted MB students in Ain Shams University's Faculty of Education, in a campaign of campus terror before student union elections (Photo ​ courtesy of​ MB students)
  • Pro-government students and criminal thugs assaulted MB students in Ain Shams University's Faculty of Education, in a campaign of campus terror before student union elections (Photo ​ courtesy of​ MB students)
  • Pro-government students and criminal thugs assaulted MB students in Ain Shams University's Faculty of Education, in a campaign of campus terror before student union elections (Photo ​ courtesy of​ MB students)
  • Pro-government students and criminal thugs assaulted MB students in Ain Shams University's Faculty of Education, in a campaign of campus terror before student union elections (Photo ​ courtesy of​ MB students)

And where was the University’s Security, which Minister of Education Dr. Hani Helal described in today’s Al-Masry Al-Youm as “without it, we would have been screwed”? (I’m not joking. That’s the quote.) NO WHERE! The security did not intervene to stop the assaults, and actually aided them. Under their watchful eyes that those herds of Baltaggiya were allowed into campus.

I’ve spoken with Emad Mubarak, the director of the Association of Freedom of Thought and Expression, who follows abuses against students closely, and he said this year the government is not taking it lightly at all with the SU elections. “Already the intimidations started before Eid,” he said. “Posters were torn down several times before, but for two days this bloodshed has went out of control. Three students at least have been hospitalized with serious injuries. This exposes what sort of lies the minister of education is spreading in the press about freedoms on campuses.”

UPDATE: Protests at Helwan University after security banned MB candidates from running.