Another “birth pang” for Condi’s New Middle East:
NATO’s top commander in Afghanistan is warning if the situation keeps on deteriorating in the country, around 70% of the Afghanis ‘may opt for Taliban’ once again.
Via Al-Jazeera
War critic journalist murdered in Moscow
I read about this before I went to sleep last night.
To be honest, I never heard of the woman before the terrible tragedy happened. But the more I read about her, the more grief I felt.
I spoke with a veteran American journalist friend of mine in Cairo, who covered the war in Chechnya and was based in Moscow in the 1990s. He knew Anna and described her as “very, very brave,” he said. “Her coverage during the war was great, but more importantly her post-war coverage. She did many stories on the mass killings by Russians and their proxies, on atrocities against Chechen detainees… That made many in Moscow upset. They did not want to hear about this sort of thing… You know, in many ways, being a reporter in Russia is more dangerous that it is here in Egypt.”
My friend then went on listing names of reporters killed by gangs or local government officials for pursuing stories about corruption or human rights abuses.
May she rest in peace.
UPDATE: Putin pressed over Moscow murder, AFP reports.
Two more citizens tortured in Arish
Two citizens were tortured by the First Arish Police Station sheriff and his assistant last Thursday, Sinai Leftists website is reporting.
Muhammad Selim Abdel Meguid Sherif and Islam Muhammad Muhammad Ali were brutalized and sexually abused by the police officers, in a “torture orgy” which started on 1am Thursday 5 October, and lasted for hours till the Dawn Prayers, Sinai Leftists charged.
No more information is available for now regarding the reasons for the two citizens’ arrest, but the Sinai Leftists promised to come forward with the names of the torturers and more details about their cases soon.
UPDATE: Ali Zalat of Al-Masry Al-Youm wrote a frontpage report on the Arish torture cases. It turns out the two young men were standing in the street at midnight, talking, doing nothing, when a police van pulled over, and an officer rudely asked for their IDs. Muhammad presented the officer with his ID; Islam told him his is lost, but he had a receipt for the new ID back at his home, and begged him to allow him to walk home to bring the receipt and the copy of the police report about the loss of his ID card.
That wasn’t good enough. The officer leveled insults and all sorts of swearwords against the two young men, and ordered them to get into the police car.
Later in the police station, Muhammad’s mobile phone rang, and he did the unforgiven sin of answering it. That’s when the police officer went out of his office with an insecticide can, he sprayed both their faces and caused them temporary blindness, brought other soldiers and started a torture orgy, where the two citizens were stripped off their clothes, and whipped with leather belts, sticks, and then sexually abused before they were released by dawn.