The Skeptic الشكاك

132 Egypt: Police Severely Beat Pro-Democracy Activists

Human Rights Watch has called for an investigation into the May 25 beating of Muhammad Al-Sharqawi and Karim Al-Sha’ir (Arabic here, photo essay here).
I spoke with two people who saw Al-Sharqawi today. They say his physical condition is much improved since the night of the 25th. The bruises are going down. He still complains of internal pains in his chest and abdomen and he has a cut in his mouth that prevents him from eating. He is in good spirits, and has taken strength from the support he has received from the other prisoners and those outside prison. If he continues to heal properly, he should be released soon. The going speculation is that State Security didn’t want to detain him again, but didn’t feel they could release him looking like he did. I hope he will go to Alexandria to visit his mother when he is released, and that he will take some time away from the demonstrations, police stations, and prisons to be with his family.

Egypt: Police Severely Beat Pro-Democracy Activists
One Activist Also Sexually Assaulted

(Cairo, May 31, 2006) ? President Hosni Mubarak should immediately order an independent judicial investigation into last Thursday?s severe beatings by security agents of political activists Karim al-Sha`ir and Mohamed al-Sharqawi, Human Rights Watch said today. Police also sexually assaulted al-Sharqawi, according to a written statement he smuggled out of prison.

On May 25, agents of the State Security Investigations (SSI) bureau of the Interior Ministry arrested al-Sha`ir and al-Sharqawi as they were leaving a peaceful demonstration in downtown Cairo. Both men said they were beaten in custody.

?The Egyptian government must investigate these attacks and punish the perpetrators,? said Joe Stork, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch. ?President Mubarak should put a stop to repeated outrages by agents of the state.?

In his statement, al-Sharqawi wrote that his captors at the Qasr al-Nil police station beat him for hours and then raped him with a cardboard tube. Then they sent him to the State Security prosecutor?s office in Heliopolis. His lawyer told Human Rights Watch that he saw al-Sharqawi at the prosecutor?s office around midnight that night. ?There wasn?t a single part of his body not covered in bruises and gashes,? the lawyer said.

Eyewitnesses told Human Rights Watch that security agents beat al-Sha`ir in the street. According to his lawyer, al-Sha`ir said that the beatings continued once he was in police custody.

The State Security prosecutor ordered both men to be held for 15 days pending investigations. The authorities had released al-Sharqawi and al-Sha`ir from Tora prison on May 22 after detaining them in earlier protests on April 24 and May 7 respectively. The demonstration on May 25 commemorated the one-year anniversary of widespread violence by police and ruling party thugs against journalists and demonstrators urging a boycott of a constitutional referendum.

Al-Sharqawi wrote in his statement that around 20 State Security officers surrounded him as he attempted to leave last week?s protest by car and began beating him furiously: ?Their punches and kicks came one after the other… There were moments of so much pain, so many insults, so many blows… targeting all my body.? Al-Sharqawi wrote that he was stuffed into a police van, after which ?they ordered me to put my head between my knees. Of course I obeyed. As soon as I did, they started hitting me on my back with all their strength.?

Al-Sharqawi, though blindfolded, believes he was taken to the Qasr al-Nil police station because of communications he heard over the police radios. ?Inside the police station,? he wrote, ?the beatings targeted particular places.? One of the officers ordered al-Sharqawi?s pants to be removed and began squeezing his left testicle, causing excruciating pain.

?The pain was terrible. He kept doing it for three minutes, during which I was screaming and asking him to stop so I could catch my breath. He pulled my underwear down, tore it to pieces, and kept hitting me on different parts of my body. They ordered me to bend over. I refused, but they forced me.? Al-Sharqawi said the officers then sodomized him with a roll of cardboard.

Gamal Eid, a lawyer for al-Sharqawi and al-Sha`ir, told Human Rights Watch that when he saw al-Sharqawi that night,

His lips were swollen and bloody, his eyes were nearly swollen shut, and you could see the imprints of shoes on his skin. He told me the beatings had continued for nearly three hours and that he had been unable to reply to police questioning because his mouth was full of blood and his lips were too swollen. It was pure sadism. I hadn?t seen anyone that badly tortured in 12 years.

Eid said that he asked the prosecutor, Muhammad Faisal, to allow a doctor he had brought with him to examine and treat al-Sharqawi, but that the prosecutor refused. The authorities only allowed al-Sharqawi access to medical treatment four days later, on May 29.

Al-Sha`ir was leaving the protest by car at around 4:45 p.m. in the company of three journalists and another activist. Dina Samak, a BBC journalist, was driving. ?As we were leaving the Journalists? Syndicate, Jihan [Sha`ban, a journalist for Sawt al-Umma and Al-Karama] asked if we could drop her and Karim [al-Sha`ir] off downtown,? she told Human Rights Watch.

As we left the garage of the syndicate, a State Security officer pointed at our car and a taxi started chasing us. About 20 meters later, the taxi pulled in front of us, blocking the street so we couldn?t continue. We were afraid. Everyone in the car locked their doors and closed their windows. Karim was shouting not to let them get him. Around 20 men in civilian clothes surrounded the car and started shouting ?stop the car, you bitch,? and all kinds of horrible insults. They threw Karim on the ground and started beating him violently.

Dina Gamil, another BBC journalist, was also in the car. ?Around 20 men surrounded the car and smashed the windows with rocks and bottles,? she told Human Rights Watch.

They unlocked the doors through the smashed window and opened them. They pulled Jihan halfway out of the car so her head was on the ground. They tried to pull me out, too, but I had my seatbelt on…. They got Karim out of the car and threw him on the ground. When a crowd formed and judges started coming out of the Judges? Club to see what was happening, the security agents threw Karim in a car.

Sha`ban confirmed this account to Human Rights Watch and said she is suffering from back pain from the officers? assault.

Eid told Human Rights Watch that when he saw al-Sha`ir at the Heliopolis office of the State Security prosecutor later that night, he also bore marks of beatings.

On May 27, a group of prisoners detained over the past month for participating in peaceful demonstrations in solidarity with reformist judges announced they were beginning a hunger strike to protest the treatment of al-Sharqawi and al-Sha`ir, and to demand the release of all those held for participating in the recent demonstrations. On May 30, visitors to the prison reported that 13 hunger strikers had been transferred to solitary confinement.

[tags]Egypt, Al-Sharqawi[/tags]

131 Ad-Dostour Interviews State Security Officer

Got this translation in my e-mail inbox today. Worth reading:

Interview with a State Security Officer
El Dostour interviews state security officer ?Walid El Dessouki?

Khaled El Balshi

It never occurred to me that I shall one day interview a state security officer, whose hands are stained with torture. However, what happened last Thursday during the trial of judges, put me in one place,? outside Lazoughli state security headquarters) with Walid El Dessouki, in charge of the anticommunist bureau and civil society organizations, known by the name of ?butcher of the detainees? and accused of many torture cases, some of whom are people I know and have worked with like the two colleageus Ibrahim El Sahari and Wael Taufik, in addition to student Ramez Gehad, Dr. Gamal Abdel Fattah, Farid Zahran and Gamal Eid director of the Arab network of human rights information. The paradox of the matter is that this happened on the same day when our colleague Abir el Askari was kidnapped, aggressed and sexually harassed while she was covering the events of the judges, less than two weeks after she had written a news story, supported by documents, about the horrors of Walid El Dessouki, nick named by demonstrators ?Mr. Bad?.

Suddenly, and after a lot of suffering and after I had passed several police barriers down town, leaving only one more to cross into the ?land of the enemies in the judges? club? I found myself face to face with the organizer and supervisor of the tearing down of the Egyptian flag and the owner of the black record in writing police investigation records against demonstrators. I had just crossed the Gaza and Rafah checkpoints, as we described the barriers that filled down town Cairo on that day. I had only to cross the ?Aeres? check point supervised by Walid el Dessouki and his crew of state security men. There was no other way to enter the judges club except through where he stood and with his permission, after his men refused to let me through. When I asked him to let me through he told me that it is impossible and that he has orders from above that only judges are allowed to pass. I asked him: If I ask the help of one of the judges would you let me through? He answered: If you bring Zakaria Abdel Aziz himself (chair of the judges club) I shall not let me through. He said he was doing his job. He realizes that I was doing mine, but those were the? orders.

During long hours of waiting a number of journalists who managed to cross the barriers (most of them said they worked for El Osbou to be allowed through) and myself became the entertainment which Walid El Dessouki decided to amuse himself with, like a cat playing with a trapped mouse. I decided to use the time in interviewing him.
It started when Nasser Amin, director of the center for the independence of the judiciary and legal profession came out of the judges club. When he expressed his surprise regarding the police troops in front of? the club, El Dessouki told him: I told the riot police leadership that we need two more police formations to start World War III.
I intervened: Can I consider this a press statement.

He looked at me with a yellow smile and did not reply.

I asked him again, so he said: that is just like you, you Dostour people. You look for hot,? inaccurate news. You did a profile for me last week. Everything about it was not true.

El Balshi – How come. They were all complaints against you charging you of torture. If it was not true, why did you not reply?

Dessouki – Why should I reply. I just want to tell you that you have made a very famous person out of me. You will make my? seniors angry with me because I am now more famous than they are. Also the last person I arrested was Ashraf ibrahim. Ask him if I had tortured him.

El Balshi – What about Wael Taufik?

Dessouki – Who is Wael Taufik?

El Balshi – A journalist you arrested and who accused you of torturing him. And many others.

Dessouki – Look I sit in my office. If someone comes and accuses me, what do you want me to do. That is why you have to be sure of your information.

El Balshi – These are confirmed information and documented in official investigation reports and human rights releases and people see this happen every day. If it is not true, you can write a reply.

Dessouki – Why should I reply? Anyway, when you come to my office, you will see how we treat people.

El Balshi – Should I take this for a threat.

Dessouki – No man. Honor me with your visit nay time and you will see for yourself how we shall receive you.

El Balshi – What about the people who were? humiliated and pulled through the streets and detained in front of my own eyes today?

Dessouki – Was anybody detained? I don?t know. I have been standing here.

El Balshi – People were arrested here in your territory. I took photos of people here while they were beaten, while they were put in the trucks, here.

Dessouki – No man. You cannot be serious. In any case we have warned political parties that demonstrations and taking to the streets is forbidden these couple of days, because of the situation in the country. Whoever will join the demonstrations will be arrested.

El Balshi – Who is ?we??

Dessouki – We.

El Balshi – And you do not know that Abir El Askari was kidnapped today and was beaten up?

Dessouki – Incredible. I swear I do not know. (He raised his mobile phone to call somebody and then put the phone back again).

El Balshi – So you mean to tell me that you have nothing to do with it and that what happened to her had nothing to do with what she wrote about you?

Dessouki – I don?t know. I was just trying to find out, but they are not replying to the phone right now. Besides you can write whatever you want.

El Balshi – Let us go back to this police mobilization. Where were you (when the bombing happened) in Dahab and Sharm El Sheikh?

Dessouki – I told you we need only two more formations to enter world war III. Despite that, we cannot stop any bombing even if we are there. They can bomb here despite all these troops. But I feel that the press wants to exaggerate things. You too, have left Dahab and what happened there and are focusing on the demonstrations. You do not talk about those who died there and you talk about the few detainees here.

El Balshi – Whoever is doing this to people here is responsible for what is happening to people there. Furthermore, it seems that you did not read well what we wrote. I even wrote an article by the title ?El Adly? rules?.

Dessouki – I read every word you write. You even wrote my name four times in the last issue. Damn you, you Dostour people. Don?t you have anybody else except me. You will make my seniors angry with me and feel that I am more famous than they are.

El Balshi – In short you let terrorists and those who kill people such as Mamdouh? Ismail run away and then you come here and beat demonstrators. Is this how you plan to protect the country?

Dessouki – Mamdouh Ismail is not our responsibility. We execute the orders which we receive. The man left the country officially and he was not yet accused of any charges.

El Balshi – We discovered that General Ahmed Hamadi is? the same state security officer Ahmed Momtaz who arrested Ayman Noor and tortured him. I wonder is Walid El Dessouki your real name or a code name?

Dessouki – No, you will be surprised by a completely different name when I leave the service.

El Balshi – Can you let us now go to the judges club. Everything is almost? over.

Dessouki – Impossible. These are orders from high up. Nobody will pass to the judges today until they tell us
something else.

El Balshi – High up, from where? Is there anybody higher than you here?

Dessouki – From high up. Very high up.

El Balshi – At Heliopolis for example, less or more?

Dessouki ? Very, very high up. I want to ask you: do you think what is happening is in the interest of the judges and has served them or has rather reduced their value and prestige in front of people?

El Balshi – Of course it has served them and everybody is sympathetic with them.

Dessouki – No. I think it degraded them and has reduced the status of a judge and people are dealing with them in an improper way.

El Balshi – It is obvious you are referring to the incident where the judge was beaten. But if you listen to what people say in public busses and microbuses, you will realize that the image of judges has improved.

Dessouki – Man. Did you see the judges riding in microbuses and going to court. I never believed I would see a judge riding a microbus or be dealt with that way.

El Balshi – It was you who closed the streets and brought those microbuses. Besides it is not important what they ride in. what matters is the cause they are defending. Also, you are standing here talking about judges while you are standing to protect rigging and corruption.

Here one of the bystanders interfered: You are corrupt and robbing the country.

Dessouki – I don?t allow you to speak like this. I have done the pilgrimage and visited? the prophet?s grave twice and I obey God very much.

El Balshi – Of course. Mr. Walid does not steal. He only tortures.

Dessouki – Why don?t you talk about the Brotherhood and what they have done ion Taufikeyya today and the shops they broke.

El Balshi – What we saw was the Brotherhood being beaten, dragged through the streets and detained from Ramsis street. It was you who broke the shops and then accuse the demonstrators.

Dessouki – You see only? what you want.

El Balshi – OK. What do you think of him who tears down the Egyptian flag?

Dessouki – None of my business.

El Balshi – You supervised this and we have pictures for you.

Dessouki – Really! Unbelievable!

El Balshi – Of course. You are so? sure the file will be closed. I only want to know what will happen if you let people demonstrate.

Dessouki – These are orders and it is forbidden that anybody take to the streets these days

El Balshi – So this will happen again in the coming demonstrations?

Dessouki – The coming demonstrations and the ones after that. This is a new tactic because of what is happening in the country. I advise anybody who wants to demonstrate to find somewhere else other than his home to spend the night two days before.

El Balshi – Let us go back to state security. Is it true that you have files for everybody?

Dessouki – We have 70 million files. But it is not always the same. Even young children have files (laughs).

El Balshi – And the journalists?

Dessouki – We have files for all journalists. But we focus on certain people and there are others whom do not care about because they are in their own world. Not all journalists are alike. You in Dostour of course have a very special status.

El Balshi – Don?t you feel bad about the people you beat. Don?t you ever reconsider and think about joining the people?

Dessouki – That is good idea (Laughs). Why is there no ?people for change?? We have journalists for change? and engineers for change?. Who is left?

El Balshi – State security officers for change! What do you think? Are you considering?

Dessouki – (Laughs). Anyway folks. Don?t forget. We shall see each other again next Thursday. And the one after that. The one after will be a day. But again I tell you whoever wants to demonstrate should look for somewhere else to stay the night.

At the end an officer came to warn him that somebody was taking photos. I asked: ?Is it forbidden to take photos? Anyway we have a whole album for you. We don?t need any more. But still, is it forbidden to take photos??

[tags]Egypt[/tags]

130 Irrepressible.info

Amnesty has launched a brilliant campaign to foil Internet censorship. I’ve joined. If you have a Web site or a blog, so should you. Here’s how.
[tags]online censorship, Amnesty, Irrepressible, censorship[/tags]

129 On Re-Reading The Yacoubian Building

Two contradictory takes, both equally true of Cairo:

I.

The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.

II.

In Maurilia, the traveler is invited to visit the city and, at the same time, to examine some old post cards that show it as it used to be: the same identical square with a hen in the place of the bus station, a bandstand in the place of the overpass, two young ladies with white parasols in the place of the munitions factory. If the traveler does not wish to disappoint the inhabitants, he must praise the postcard city and prefer it to the present one, though he must be careful to contain his regret at the changes within definite limits: admitting that the magnificence and prosperity of the metropolis Maurilia, when compared to the old, provincial Maurilia, cannot compensate for a certain lost grace, which, however, can be appreciated only now in the old postcards, whereas before, when that provincial Maurilia was before one’s eyes, one saww absolutely nothing graceful and would see it even less today, if Maurilia had remained unchanged; and in any case the metropolis has the added attraction that, through what it has become, one can look back with nostalgia at what it was.

Beware of saying to them that sometimes different cities follow one another on the same site and under the same name, born and dying without knowing one another, wtihout communication among themselves. At times even the names of the inhabitants remain the same, and their voices’ accent, and also the features of the faces; but the gods who live beneath names and above places have gone off without a word and outsiders have settled in their place. It is pointless to ask whether the new ones are better or worse than the old, since there is no connection between them, just as the old postcards do not depict Maurilia as it was, but a different city which, by chance, was called Maurilia, like this one.

—Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1972. English translation by William Weaver, Harcourt, 1974.

[tags]Egypt, Cairo[/tags]

128 The Storm over the Israel Lobby

I’m late to this party, but finally found time to read Michael Massing’s “The Storm over the Israel Lobby” in the New York Review of Books today. If you haven’t already, read it.

[tags]Israel, AIPAC, lobby[/tags]

126 Out with the old, in with the old

Nobody knew what to expect of yesterday’s protests marking the anniversary of last year’s violent dispersal of protests against an amendment to the Constitution governing the conduct of the Egyptian presidential elections.

Some expected continued police violence. The Interior Ministry had detained hundreds of activists over the previous month. Interior Ministry thugs had beaten dozens of others in the street. Police had beaten and sexually assaulted journalists and even a senior judge. A court refused to hear Ayman Nour’s appeal of his sentence to five years in prison.

“The age of protest in Egypt is over,” a State Security official reportedly told Ahmed Salah, a pro-democracy activist detained early in the crackdown, while he was in detention. “For a year and a half there was a little break. Now this is finished. Now, when you demonstrate, you go to jail.”

One Tuesday, President Mubarak, apparently confusing himself with God, told the quasi-official daily Al-Gomhuria that coverage of police violence against protesters was “libel and blasphemy,” that the press reports were illegal under Egyptian law (true), and that the only reason the journalists weren’t in jail for reporting them was because he supports freedom of the press.

Others thought the government would not crack down on these protests. International newspapers, rights organizations, and governments had sharply criticized the government’s actions. The Washington Post hinted that Dick Cheney had called Gamal Mubarak, son and possible heir to the president, on to the carpet about the crackdown. A reporter friend with good contacts in the U.S. State Department and Cheney’s office told me that his connections in both places had confirmed that Cheney had delivered a stiff message about the crackdown to Gamal. Though these off-the-record, wink-wink, nudge-nudge “leaks” smelled of the U.S. government telling reporters what they wanted to hear without actually having to go on record as having told them anything, the regime’s light treatment of Justices Mekki and Al-Bastawissi and its release of prisoners detained April 24 seemed to confirm the rumors and to suggest the government would not crack down on the May 25 protests.

In the event, both the optimists and the pessimists were right. The protests passed peacefully. When I showed up at the Journalists’ Syndicate yesterday, a State Security official asked who I worked for. Having passed several squads of glowering beltagiya—plainclothes State Security officers who have been responsible for most of the violence over the past month—on my way in, I was nervous. I told him I was a human-rights researcher. His face lit up. “Welcome, be at ease,” he said, inviting me to pass through the police lines into the crowd of protesters gathered on the steps of Journalists’ Syndicate. “Freedom,” he exclaimed, spreading his arms in an expansive gesture at the protesters. I thanked him and declined the invitation to cross the police lines.

Hundreds of judges, encircled by an enormous Egyptian flag, marched from the Judges Club around the corner to the High Court, composed themselves into dignified poses for the cameras, received the crowd’s enthusiastic applause, then left without incident. Leaders marched back around to the Journalists’ Syndicate and saluted the Kifaya protesters, who went bananas (see photo, top). “At times like this, I’m proud to be an Egyptian,” one woman told me. “Should we ululate? I want to ululate,” another woman asked her friend. “No, these are judges. They might not approve.”

The protesters stayed on the steps of the Journalists’ Syndicate until they had shouted themselves hoarse at around 3:30 p.m. They were allowed to leave peacefully. One friend, a journalist for the LA Times, was pepper-sprayed as he was trying to cross police lines to leave the protest, but I saw him immediately afterward and he was fine. I’ve posted a few photos of the day’s events on Flickr. Contributors to Arabist.net were all over it. Sandmonkey has some very funny quotes from his day in the sun.
It seemed the day had passed peacefully, that the government deserved congratulations for having come to its senses and realizing that cracking down on such protests damage it far more than permitting them. And then word came over SMS that Karim Al-Shaer and Mohamed Al-Sharqawi, two recently released activists who had defied warnings not to attend further protests, had been arrested, beaten, and brutally sexually assaulted in police custody at the Qasr al-Nil police station in downtown Cairo. Activists who saw them at the State Security Prosecutor’s office collected their testimony. State Security interrogators imprisoned both for another 15 days. Ahmed Salah, another recently released activist who had defied warnings not to participate in further protests, managed to escape arrest by hiding in the Judges’ Club.

Yesterday’s message was clear: this protest would be tolerated. But lest anyone think the government had relinquished control, the Interior Ministry would keep its promises to the detainees. And the beltagiya would still stand in disciplined rows, clubs at the ready, as a reminder. The government had retreated from its tough stance of the past weeks, but it was a tactical retreat, and could be temporary. The ground rules still apply.

[tags]Egypt, judges, protests, kifaya[/tags]

127 Droubi Released

State Security released Kifaya activist Ahmed Yasser Al-Droubi today. Rumors had been circulating that he would be released soon, and that he would have been earlier had a bureaucratic error not gummed up the works, but confirmation came today that he’s a free man again.

[tags]Egypt, droubi, kifaya[/tags]

125 Tunisia Ejects Amnesty International Representative

In transit, now, but just wanted to pass on this email I received today, especially since I have met Yves Steiner, a board member of Amnesty’s Switzerland chapter, a few times:

Nearly fifty plain clothed police agents made their way on Sunday afternoon to the Annual General Meeting of Amnesty International-Tunisia in the suburbs of Tunis and forced Yves Steiner of the board Amnesty International-Switzerland to follow them without any explanation or warrant.

Steiner was later ordered to leave the country immediately, according to reliable sources in Tunis.

Relations between Tunisia and Switzerland deteriorated at the opening of WSIS in mid-November. The opening speech made by the Swiss president in which he called on the need to respect freedom of expression inside and outside the WSIS venue prompted anger among Tunisian officials and led the state-owned TV to stop its live coverage of the the opening session of WSIS.

AI-Tunisia strongly condemned “the aggression against its friend and guest Yves Steiner,” in a statement issued on Sunday evening.

“This is a violation of all laws and basic standards of decency. We call on all representatives of national and international civil society and human rights defenders to denounce heavy-handed methods and to pressure the Tunisian authorities to put an end to the use of such methods,” said AI-Tunisia.

[tags]Tunisia, tunisie, Amnesty International[/tags]

124 Al-Droubi Writes from His Cell

Salma Said has published a dispatch from Ahmed Yassir Al-Droubi, detained April 24 at a sit-in protest in solidarity with the Judges’ Club. Read it on her site, or here, below the break… More…

123 McCormack’s Affront to the Independence of the Egyptian Judiciary

Thanks to Nutgraph for noticing this quote from Egypt’s Foreign Ministry, penned in response to a statement from the U.S. State Department on Ayman Nour’s latest date in court.

Egypt’s foreign ministry said on Friday it was “astonished at the manner taken by the official spokesman of the American foreign ministry,” which “implied an affront to the rulings and independence of the Egyptian judiciary.”

Whoever wrote that has now supplanted the head of the Belarusian secret service as the author of my favorite quote of the year.
[tags]Egypt, Ayman Nour[/tags]

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