Tanta Flax and Oil Company strikers protesting in front of the ministerial cabinet HQ in downtown Cairo, August 2009.
CIA trains Palestinian torturers
From the Guardian:
Palestinian security agents who have been detaining and allegedly torturing supporters of the Islamist organization Hamas in the West Bank have been working closely with the CIA, the Guardian has learned.
Less than a year after Barack Obama signed an executive order that prohibited torture and provided for the lawful interrogation of detainees in US custody, evidence is emerging the CIA is co-operating with security agents whose continuing use of torture has been widely documented by human rights groups.
The relationship between the CIA and the two Palestinian agencies involved – Preventive Security Organization (PSO) and General Intelligence Service (GI) – is said by some western diplomats and other officials in the region to be so close that the American agency appears to be supervising the Palestinians’ work.
One senior western official said: “The [Central Intelligence] Agency consider them as their property, those two Palestinian services.” A diplomatic source added that US influence over the agencies was so great they could be considered “an advanced arm of the war on terror”.
Demolitions spark east Cairo clashes
Police clash with Nasr City residents
Nasr City residents destroyed a police station, after Central Security Forces killed a 60-year-old while demolishing houses of poor citizens in Ezbet el-Haggana area.
Two officers, 15 soldiers and dozens of citizens were injured in the clashes. The government has U-turned, and canceled its demolishing order.
Rafah’s Apartheid Wall
Al-Masry Al-Youm English Edition has published a story from Rafah, as well as pictures (courtesy of the smugglers) of the new underground wall erected by the Egyptian regime and US military to tighten the siege on Gaza.