Two months for torturing suspects

Yet another case of policemen tried for torturing suspects in 2011 , this time with the twist of two policemen actually getting a sentence.

So what was the case about:

Investigations had revealed that the two policemen arrested two bearded brothers at an airport in February 2011 and tortured them at Almaza Prison to force them to confess that they belong to terrorist organizations.

And what about the sentence for doing this to the two innocent brothers one might ask? Two months with hard labour with the option of paying L.E. 500 (amounts to 725 USD) bail for a suspended sentence. On top of that , it´s most likely they will also keep their work as policemen.

For sake of not being too onesided in dealing with this story, the tortured brothers will get compensated:

The court also ordered the defendants to pay 10,000 pounds (1,450 US Dollars) as a temporary compensation to the alleged victims.

For as long as anyone can remember the culture of impunity towards the endemic human rights violations taking place in police stations , prisons and security camps , this was the case during the Mubarak years and the case of Khaled Said , whom was tortured to death by policemen in Ibrahimiyya, Alexandria in June 2010 was one key trigger of the January 25th revolution 2011 , Jan 25th being police day in Egypt.

The years since the Jan 25 revolution in 2011 has not changed that in any way. The lack of reform within the police is one of the most frustrating and disapointing aspects of the last 30 months.

For more on torture in Egypt since 2005 , including the case of Emad al Kebir. read here.

Photo chronicler of the Egyptian revolution Mosa´ab Elshamy website

One of my absolute favourite photo chroniclers of the Egyptian revolution, Mosa´ab ElShamy has a new website up showcasing his great work. The photos from Rabaa shows the determination , the devastation , grief , chaos and absolute horror that will forever be connected to that place and time in history.

The website is found here and you can also follow him on twitter.

La Moneda and al Ittihadiyya - 9/11 and July 3rd

40 years ago this month , the military coup against president Salvador Allende occured , starting with the attack by the Chilean air force on the presidential palace La Moneda. Salvador Allende took his own life defending the constitution and the presidency rather than surrender to the Junta. The date 9/11 has been a commemoration for Chilean democracy , freedom and also opposition to General Pinochet´s rule during the seventeen long years of autocratic rule.

There has been a lot of comparison between what happend in 1973 and the July third coup in Egypt , some have bearing , and some not. Ellis Goldberg has written a long and thoughtful piece on the two coups and i can´t help but love the way he begins the blog post and i´m wondering if someone in forty years time will have a framed picture of Morsi on his wall and get the same reaction of why and whom this man is. Surely there are still people having Nasser on their walls , even in their shops , but a man like the first president and July 23rd army coup figure head Muhammed Naguib is almost forgotten by the large public , or at least was until Jan25 2011.

Here is how Ellis Goldberg starts off his Tale of Two Coups:

I keep a black and white photograph on the wall. It’s a grainy old black and white photo, poorly mounted and inexpertly framed. Very few people who mount the stairs from the door to my living room recognize the faces in the picture. Usually they ignore it completely but sometimes their attention is drawn by the large hammer and sickle in the center foreground. It has been years since any visitors recognized that the unsmiling, somber figure just above and behind the Communist emblem is the former President of Chile, Salvador Allende. He is, appropriately perhaps, surrounded by members of the Popular Unity government and yet appears to be abstracted and isolated. Only the Minister of Labor, Luis Figueroa, is looking directly at Allende who lay dead in Chile’s presidential palace, La Moneda, a week after the photograph was taken. General Augusto Pinochet had seized power in a military coup and the Chilean Air Force had bombed Chile's own government center.

The rest of the long and well written piece that pose many important questions can be read here.

Curfew dosen´t suit Cairo

This is a must read by Sarah Carr on Egypt during the last month or so.

On curfew in a city that normally never sleeps , never shuts down , and never ever turns silent..

Life in Egypt has mostly shrunk, politically, geographically, socially. For two long weeks, Egyptians in governorates affected by the unrest were under a curfew from 7 pm till 6 am. A frenzied scuttling began in Cairo around 5 pm, as shop shutters were banged shut and commuters began to head home. Daredevils who left too late faced the wrath of unpredictable army officers at checkpoints.
And then, from 7 pm, the terrible stillness. Curfew doesn’t suit Cairo, a city whose élan derives principally from its inhabitants and which is used to stretching and coming alive after the sun has set, in the cool of the evening. Without them there is nothing to see but the city’s decline, an ordinary face without the disguise of transformative makeup, the clear blue eyes of the river its only untouched feature.

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On going back to old tactics , on how to make the situation much worse than it could have been. Simply put the Rabaa massacare , the blood , the people , their cause and the chaos , and aftermath , the effectiveness of how to clean away , a place that until August 14th was full of life. The effectiveness of cleaning away evidence , restoring normallness and earie empty silence.


A principal reason Egypt is in its current political mess is that successive regimes—like regimes of poor governance everywhere—have equated shutting down the physicality of dissent with addressing this dissent. The best example of this was the August 14 dispersal of the Muslim Brotherhood’s sit-ins in Cairo. Conservative figures put the death toll at nearly a thousand, with many more injured.
I went to the Rabaa El-Adaweya area of Nasr City in Cairo, the site of the biggest sit-in, the next morning. It was a post-apocalyptic scene. Bulldozers roared up and down the street carrying away debris at great speed. The air was filled with the dust from their tracks. Donkey carts trundled between them and the smoldering remains of fires. Waste pickers worked over what was left: clothes, medicine, shoes belonging to the dead and to those who had fled. The image of deposed President Mohamed Morsi peeked out from posters trapped in the piles of waste that the pickers could not convert into profit.
In less than twenty-four hours, it was as if the sit-in—which had acquired the proportions of a small but developed village, with barbers, a children’s playground and even two-tier housing—had never been. It is the same story with the smaller Nahda Square sit-in in Giza, another patch of land that had been appropriated by supporters of deposed president Morsi. I went through an army checkpoint there after curfew a week after it was attacked, and all that remained was some graffiti and scorched land where tents—including the people inside them—had been set on fire.

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She goes on to describe the way the general public has reacted to the clampdown on the MB and their media outlets , with silence , but clapping hands to the march of al Sissi and Muhammed Ibrahim in their fight against "Terrorism" Almost all media goes in the same direction. She ends like this:

In one of Cairo’s public squares, there are badly produced posters for sale depicting Sisi holding a knife slaughtering a sheep with Morsi’s head. “This is what happens to those that don’t do as the people say,” the poster warns grimly. The general public, in its desire to see the Brotherhood destroyed, agrees with this sentiment, and it is this that is most dangerous about the current state of affairs. The regime has succeeded in hoodwinking citizens into believing that by physically removing the Brotherhood from the picture, it has neutralized the threat, real and imagined, from Islamists. The attack last week on the interior minister’s convoy, and the simmering insurgency in the Sinai, shows that they have failed. What is even more problematic is that the general public has once again accepted, so uncritically, exactly the tactics that it took to the streets to oppose on that dreamy day of January 25, 2011, so long ago.

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Are we back at square one ? The contours of a Mubarakesque state without Mubarak is right in front of us, and the only way out of it is to snap out of this collective amnesia and turn back to the togetherness of the 18 dreamy days of #Jan25.

Hosni has left the building

In a country were the last leader who left office while still breathing, rather than six feet under, was Egypt´s first President Muhammed Naguib in 1954, the clip above is truly of a highly symbolic as well as historic nature. It shows the painting of ex-president Hosni Mubarak being taken down from the wall of the room where the Government convenes.

It manifests the principal gain of the January 25th revolution so far, and one cannot help but wonder whom is next in line to be put inside the frame?

I have a suggestion to make, i would like to replace the painting with a digital photo frame, equal in size, were the photos would switch for every meeting and every martyr of the January 25th revolution would have a photo with his/her name and age as a reminder for the government as a whole that they are supposed to serve the Egyptian people, rather than every whim of it´s President.

18 days and 32 seconds

18 days ago this started with a demonstration, i had very little hope for a success for that particular it's been an emotional rolercoaster ever since, with what happend in Hajj al Arbaeen in Suez and then on the 28th, this day that was dedicated to the 300 + martyrs. i would like to send a thought and a piece of my heart to all the families who have lost a brother, sister, daughter or son during these 18 days, and also to all those who lost someone due to police brutality and torture during the 29 years , 8 months and 3 days of Mubaraks rule, and perhaps more than anyone my thoughts goes to Khaled Said and his encredible mother, It's seems that a day dedicated to the martyes is also a perfect day for Mubaraks departure, and the beginning of a new dawn for Egypt.

The 18 days was ended by a speech held by Omar Suleiman, it all lasted for 32 seconds, and this is probably the last we will see of both of them. The army is in charge, but i will worry about that, beginning tommorow.

Today is day of joy and celebration, it's also a day that will go down in history books as the day when The January 25th revolution bear fruit, it's been the most fullfiling days of my life , and i'm happy beyond compare.

I will end this post with a video of the crowd at al Tahrir singing the national anthem, the Egyptian people now not only has a great history, but hopefully a bright future, all made possible by the their courage.

Mission not accomplished , yet...

Just over an hour and a half ago, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces issued a statement:

Statement Number One, issued by the Higher Council of the Armed Forces,

Stemming from the armed forces' responsibility and committing to the protection of the people, safeguarding their interest and security, and keen on the safety of the homeland, the citizens and the achievements of the great Egyptian people, and asserting the legitimate rights of the people,

The Higher Council of the Armed Forces convened today, Thursday, 10 February 2011, to deliberate on the latest developments of the situation and decided to remain in continuous session to discuss what measures and arrangements could be taken to safeguard the homeland and its achievements, and the aspirations of the great Egyptian people.

Peace, mercy and the blessings of God.

It seems to me that what has been more or less clear for the last week or so, that President Mubarak that has been in power only by name, for the last week or so will take on a more permanent arrangement. Significant in the statement was the fact that this was Statement No 1, meaning more statements can be expected - To my ears this means an active role for the Supreme Council of Armed Forces , if it´s to play a part in the political proccess that will follow , regardless of Mubarak´s imediate plans, is still written in the stars. Significant is also that Defence Minister Tantawy was among the Council, He´s been the Defence Minister for 20 years, and has been extremely loyal to Mubarak until now, The comments by the new NDP Secretary General Hossam Badrawy, once close to Gamal Mubarak, that the right thing to do for President Mubarak suggests that the new leadership of the party has decided that it´s not longer in their interests to support the President. If Hosni Mubarak, Vice-President Omar Suleiman, or the army will be in charge tommorow morning is still an open question, as is if the January 25th movement´s demands will be met, in full as stated, or only in part.

The speech that is said to be forthcoming in the next hours, will perhaps answer some of those questions, though not all. That´s why the mission is not likely to be accomplished for the people on al Tahrir Square , and around the country, perhaps a victory is around the corner, but the battle is not won yet.

What seems sure, is that Mubarak is out, but that´s the only sure thing..

So Eighties

One of my favourite photos from around the world expressing their solidarity with the Egyptian people during these fantastic 17 days is this from Pretoria in South Africa.