Tag: alexandria

Torture in Hadra Prison

Posted on By 3arabawy

The above video has been circulating in the Egyptian blogosphere for a while. It purportedly shows a “welcome party” handed down by Alexandria’s Hadra Prison officers and corporals to a new truckload of prisoners. This video has been uploaded to youtube on 8 March, the abuse is believed to have happened sometime after January.

The Hadra prison is one of the most notorious prisons in the north (together with Borg el-Arab). Rights groups have already recorded several cases of torture in that facility.

Has the above video been investigated by General Mansour el-Essawi, the interior minister? Has it been investigated by the public prosecutor? Have those torturers, whose identities could be easily found by the interior ministry, been held accountable?

The almighty Israeli spies

Posted on By 3arabawy

When students and workers took to the streets in Alexandria, November 1968, denouncing the Nasserist regime, the state-run media announced the arrest of Israeli spies who were involved in the agitation for the protests (Arab Report and Record, 1-15 December 1968: 399).

My mother, who took part in the 1971-2 student protests against Sadat, recalls how the Central Security Forces were beating them with sticks while denouncing the students as “Israeli agents.”

During the 18 day uprising, a young woman journalist appeared on TV “confessing” she was trained by the Mossad to foment those “riots” in Tahrir. And of course it turned out to be a big lie.

And now, the government has announced it caught another Israeli spy gathering information about the protests and fomented chaos with the intent “of harming political, economic and social interests and negatively impacting the course of the revolution”… and “prosecutors suspect he paid protesters to cause friction with the military and to foment Muslim-Christian tensions.”

Seriously what a soap opera.

By this latest case, the Mukhabarat is trying to pull together a cheap move, so that any public criticism against the military would be depicted immediately as the work of Israeli spies. More importantly, the Mukhabarat is trying to convince the public it’s a vital agency, in charge of protecting the country from any “foreign plots”, so as not to receive the same treatment as State Security Police.

The Mukhabrrat is hardly any different from SS. It’s been involved in renditions and torture, spying on Egyptians abroad, coordinating dirty operations with the CIA and Mossad. Do Israelis have spies in Egypt? Of course. And the biggest two spies are Mubarak and Omar Suleiman. One is enjoying a five star treatment in Sharm el-Sheikh, and the other seems to be getting away with his crimes, and possibly even run for presidency!

Dear Mukhabarat, stop treating us like children. Who the hell is this Israeli super agent who will single handedly go around fomenting protests, agitating against the army in the streets and mosques? Get a life, grow up.