State Security “detains” Kefaya activist’s car!

Posted on By 3arabawy

Engineer Muhammad Al-Ashqar parked his old Lada in Champilyon Street in Downtown in the evening, and ran to catch a meeting for Kefaya’s coordinating committee.

Later, he received news his car was pulled by the Traffic Police. When he went to Maarouf Police Station to get it. He found out his car was “detained” by State Security as it was fully covered with Kefaya stickers! The Central Security Forces and plainclothes police informers circled it, and the officers refused to give him the car back.

You can find more details posted on Kefaya’s website.

UPDATE: Ashqar went to try get his car back again on Thursday noon, when he discovered he was to be referred to the prosecutor on charges of “putting sticker on a car, that encourages hatred against the ruling regime,” according to Kefaya’s website.

Eid sexual assaults… It happened before!

Posted on By 3arabawy

I received the following message and video from Sherif Sadek, who shot a clip of assaults against women in downtown Cairo in the presence of the police, during the previous Eid el-Adha, January 2006:

Ahlan ya Hossam,
My name is Sherif Sadek. I’m a filmmaker/activist living in New York City.
I have video that I shot last Eid el Adha when I was visiting my family in Cairo of gangs running after girls in Talaat Harb Street. I posted it online on youtube.
Please feel free to post this on your site, whether the link to youtube, or the actual video itself.
There’s no sound, and it’s about 7 minutes long. It starts with a shot of a “police box” just parked. then you see the crowd looking at something. then two girls come out of the crowd, with a police officer in the front, but way in front, and he clearly doesn’t care about this headache. the girls are escorted by some guys trying to take them away, then the crowd (or more like the entire street) runs after them. The turn right on “Ma3rouf Street” to go to a “No2tet Shorta” that’s right around the corner.

I watched the film, and indeed I could see the police car parked aside the road, and the officer did not move to do anything. The same scenario was repeated on a worse scale in the following Eid el-Fitr, October 2006.