Police stopped a solidarity caravan from Cairo, that was carrying medical supplies, blankets and food for the Mahalla detainees and their families, on the outskirts of the town. It seems earlier the police also stole the car of activist Cairo U prof Dr. Manal Abdel Moneim, according to a phone call I received from an activist in Cairo… The HMLC blog has a report on the incident here.
Also Nora Younis sent out a text message around half an hour ago, saying: “Heading 2 Mahalla, police stopped our car @ check point, confiscated our IDs & car keys.”
11:50am: Reuters photographer Nasser Nouri has been arrested in Mahalla, and is kept at Mahalla’s 1st Police Station, according to an activist source in Cairo. I tried calling Nasser on his mobile, but it’s switched off. The activist source added that more police troops were mobilized into the Nile Delta town, from neighboring provinces including Daqahliya. I was also told many of the detainees were transferred from Mahalla and Tanta to other more distant prisons, like Bourg el-Arab, as a way to prevent the families of the detainees who’ve been staging protests from assembling in Mahalla, and instead relocate them to more remote areas. Detained US photojournalist and friend James Buck is still in police custody, continuing a hunger strike that is entering its 18th hour, and is saying his translator Muhammad Mari’e has been taken away by the police… Earlier, James, who is kept at Mahalla’s 1st Police Station said: “Many plainclothes police wil go 2 diffrnt mosqs in mhala for noon prayer today to prevent actions after prayer“. I’m also extremely worried as Swedish journalist Per Björklund also sent out a text message saying he was “being held at checkpoint outside mahalla..”
1:15PM: The police checkpoints around Mahalla which barred the activists from entering are manned by Police Colonel Ahmad Fathi, of Tanta’s State Security Bureau. I hope someone would snap a photo of him.
1:20PM: According to a phone call from an activist in Cairo, a group of roughly 25 activists, as well as the crews of Dream TV and Orbit, are more or less in police custody outside Mahalla. They were refused earlier entry to the town, and police also bans them from moving back to Cairo.
1:35PM: The Friday prayers ended, and a journalist in Mahalla SMSed me to say no protests spotted, and the city is quiet.
1:50PM: Here’s an updated AP report on James Buck, by Maggie Michael…
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) _ An American freelance journalist detained in Egypt over his coverage of recent economic unrest said Friday he had been released but was staying in a police station to protest the arrest of his translator.
The journalist James Buck said he and his Egyptian translator were detained Thursday in the northern city of Mahalla el-Kobra, home to the Middle East’s largest textile factory, where riots broke out earlier this week over high prices and low wages.
Buck, speaking to The Associated Press by telephone Friday from inside the Mahalla police station, said the state prosecutor had ordered his release early Friday along with his translator Mohammed Saleh Ahmad. But as soon as they stepped outside the prosecutor’s office in Mahalla, a police officer re-arrested them.
He said that Friday morning he was told he was free to go, but his translator Mohammed Saleh Ahmad was still being held.
“I started a hunger strike and I will not leave without my translator,” Busk said.
Buck, a graduate student at the University of California-Berkeley’s School of Journalism, is a freelance journalist, photographer and graphic designer who recently contributed material to The Oakland Tribune in California.
He said police detained him as he was taking photos of families who were holding a hunger strike to protest the arrest of their relatives. Buck said he was interrogated for about 45 minutes but was not harmed. He said his camera’s memory card had been confiscated.
Word of Buck’s arrest first appeared on a Egyptian political blog Arabawy (https://arabawy.org) to which Buck contributes. Buck traveled to Mahalla from Cairo four times this week and had been harassed several times by the police who threatened him, according to the blog’s author, Hossam el-Hamalawy.
Shortly after his arrest Thursday evening, Buck sent a text message to his own Web site, https://twitter.com/jamesbuck, with one word: “Arrested.”
2:45PM: Nora Younis is among the journalists and activists detained by the pigs outside Mahalla. She says that there are 30 of them, who had been stopped at a police checkpoint, 20 Km before Mahalla, around 11am. They are surrounded now by plainclothes security agents and high ranking State Security officers… In Mahalla, which seems to be calm today (or at least as of time of writing) Muhammad Mari’e, James’ translator, has been taken away by the police to Mahalla’s 2nd Police Station, and the police forced James to leave the 1st station where he had been on a hunger strike demanding Muhammad’s release.
3:22PM: I received this from Nora:
They just returned our car keys and ids, we’re surrounded by big police convoy to drive us back to cairo.
I’ve also spoken to James a couple of minutes ago. He is leaving the police station.
4pm: There will be a Press Conf on today’s crackdown on the university professors’ solidarity trip and police practices in Mahalla, 7:30pm at the Hisham Mubarak Law Center… And here’s an AFP report, written prior to their release, by Jailan Zayan…
Egypt police detain academics heading for flashpoint city
CAIRO, April 11, 2008 (AFP) – Egyptian police detained 25 academics on Friday as they headed to the Nile Delta city of Mahalla el-Kobra to show solidarity with those injured in deadly clashes there earlier this week, a member of the group said.
“We are being held and we are not being told why,” psychiatrist Aida Seif al-Dawla told AFP by telephone from a police checkpoint around 20 kilometres (12.4 miles) from Mahalla.
“They took some of our IDs and they confiscated the keys of one car traveling in the convoy,” she said, adding that the convoy was surrounded by police.
“We were going to meet with families of the injured; most of those traveling are doctors,” Seif al-Dawla said.
Violent riots rocked the industrial city on Sunday and Monday during which an 15-year-old boy died after being shot by police. Hundreds were injured and around 300 people arrested.
Mahalla has become a flashpoint for popular protests by workers and residents against low wages and skyrocketing prices of food staples. A strike there in 2006 led to a wave of industrial action around the country.
Economic reforms that have yielded a seven-percent annual growth rate in the past three years have failed to trickle down.
A wave of recent protests, including by tax collectors, doctors, teachers and workers, is seen as potentially the most serious challenge to President Hosni Mubarak’s regime.
9:15PM: I received news earlier about Nasser Nouri’s release, but only managed to speak with him now. Nasser said he was detained in Mahalla, together with another journalist from al-Fagr called Ahmad Hammad, around 11am. They were in a microbus attempting to enter Mahalla from Mansoura. State Security agents however stopped the microbus, requested the IDs of all the passengers. When they saw the press credentials of Nasser and Ahmad, they took them in private car, and locked them up in a room at Mahalla’s Train Station (not Mahalla’s 1st Police Station, as reported earlier). Nasser witnessed the police taking away five of the microbus passengers in a blue prison truck. “I don’t know what happened to them,” Nasser said. “They didn’t take us to the Police Station because they didn’t want anyone to find us. They searched our bags. State Security officers in plainclothes interrogated us, asking ‘what are you doing here? who are your sources of information? who do you work for?’ and other questions. We were not harmed physically. The officers said they were from Cairo not from Mahalla. They arrived the previous night on a ‘mission’ (ma2mouriya). We were released around 3:30pm.”
Here are photos of Nasser and Ahmad in detention, courtesy of Nasser:
A friend also passed on a message from detained Kefaya activist George Ishaq’s family:
On Thursday, April 10th, he was kept from 4:00 am to 12:00 on the floor in Qesm Awal al-Qahira al-Jadida. Today, he has been also kept waiting on the floor at the State Security office of al-Tagammu al-Khamis, where he is being interrogated, from 1:00 pm till 3:00 pm. Towards 3:00, he was given a broken chair to sit on. Moreover, he has not received any food or water for the whole day today.
George’s son Shahir is avalaible for comments and can be reached at: +20123875917.
The police crackdown on the Mahalla protests as well as the round up of Egyptian opposition activists and journalists were denounced by Human Rights Watch in a statement today, (also available in Arabic). I received also a statement from Amnesty International, which you can read here.
10:55PM: The State Security Prosecutor ordered Ishaq’s release on a LE10,000 bail, around 6pm, but he was only freed around at 10:30pm, according to a phone call with his son Shahir who is heading home now. Kefaya activists Sami Francis and Fathi el-Hennawi’s detention were extended by 15 more days… Movie star Khaled el-Sawy denounced the crackdown on the Mahalla demonstrators, and called for the establishment of a political party for the Egyptian workers to confront Mubarak’s police state.