Tag: mukhabarat

State Security Prosecutor summons Ghazl el-Mahalla labor leaders for interrogation

Posted on By 3arabawy

I spoke with Kareem el-Beheiri around three and half hours ago, and he assured me the morale is extremely high among the strikers. Thousands of them were sleeping over in the factory. Kareem was then rushing to upload the videos and the pix of the strike.

He also said Mubarak’s Central Security Forces troops are still unseen around the factory since their retreat on Saturday night after it became clear the strike was to proceed on the following morning. However, Kareem said the place is swarmed with plainclothes State Security Police agents, as well as agents from the Mukhabarat… Yep, in case you didn’t know Mahalla has an office for the Mukhabarat (the agency which is entitled with foreign security issues) since it’s considered a “strategic city” since the days of Nasser. These Mukhabarat agents show up when there are strikes or signs of discontent. It goes to show the power and strength of Mahalla, and the fear it constitutes to the Egyptian ruling class.

Kareem also said he was verbally threatened by a State Security agent, after he shouted against the government and the president.

I also spoke with Muhammad el-Attar and el-Sayyed Habib after I hung up with Kareem. Both have virtually lost their voices from exhaustion and from chanting in the marches. Both are keen on seeing international solidarity coming on their behalf, and are personally requesting in the name of the 27,000 Ghazl el-Mahalla workers that international labor organizations and unions express an urgently needed solidarity.

More worryingly, Attar told me he’d been summoned to the State Security Prosecutor’s office, together with Faisal Laqousha, and two other labor activists (I could hardly hear the names, as Attar’s voice was weak and I was standing by the train station where there was so much noise). Attar doesn’t know the charges yet to be leveled against him and his comrades.

I’m calling once again on labor activists around the world to issue statements of solidarity. The security crackdown on the strikers may well be underway.

Down with Mubarak’s Police… Victory to the Mahalla Strikers…

London balconies falling down, falling down, falling down…

Posted on By 3arabawy

… as some people are wondering after Ashraf Marwan, and Soua’ad Hosni. but they tend to forget too General El-Leithy Nassef, Sadat’s former head of the Republican Guards, who played a central role in the 15 May 1971 “Corrective Revolution” against Nasser’s old-guards.

And guess what? General Nassef also jumped off from a London balcony… in the same building where Soua’ad Hosni died. Somebody go and check those bloody balconies.

Just to let you know: I live on the ground floor. OK? So if one day, la sama7 allah, you find the hoss lying dead in the backyard or something, then don’t jump to conspiracy theories… It can be then that I got depressed, and decided to jump off my 40 cm high window. And I may also decide, while flying from that height and before I hit the ground, to punch myself in the eyes a couple of times. Ok?

Interview with former armed Nasserist activist

Posted on By 3arabawy

Kefaya’s website has posted an exclusive interview with Nazmi Shahin, member of Egypt’s Revolution group, who was involved in armed operations against CIA and Mossad agents in Cairo.

The armed organization was founded by Nasserist army and intelligence officers in the beginning of the 1980s. They managed to kill two Mossad agents in August 1985 and March 1986. Their other two operations failed however: One in 1984, when they tried to assassinate an Israeli agent, the other was in 1987 when they tried to target the CIA Middle East Station Chief, who escaped with a head injury according to the interview.

The members of the organization were rounded up by the government in 1987, and were BRUTALLY tortured by the security services. They were given harsh long prison sentences in 1991. The group’s founder, former intelligence officer Mahmoud Nour Eddin, died in prison in 1998 due to maltreatment, while the rest of the activists were released around 2002.

Most of the group’s members spent their years of incarceration in solitary confinement. For example, Nazmi Shahin, the former army officer, spent 14 out of his 15 years alone in his cell.

You can read the interview here and here.