Wanderlust

Tag: Cairo

  • One protester’s tale: Paying the fee for looking for freedom in Egypt

    Mahmoud Mohammed Hussein Image caption Mahmoud Hussein says he needs a crutch on account of abuse and medical forget in jail

    it is six years because the outbreak of the 18-day revolution in Egypt which swept the autocrat, Hosni Mubarak, from energy. But human rights campaigners say the location within the united states of america is now a ways worse than earlier than the uprising, as Orla Guerin reviews from Cairo.

    With every step he is taking, Mahmoud Mohammed Hussein is reminded of the cost he paid for in need of freedom and democracy in Egypt.

    The 21-yr-vintage has a reported limp and is determined by a crutch – a legacy, he says, of beatings all the way through virtually 800 days in a chain of prisons. Ten months have handed on the grounds that his unencumber, however he still appears frail.

    Mahmoud is certainly one of thousands who’ve been detained in up to date years below Egypt’s up to date strongman, President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi.

    As military leader he led the military overthrow of Egypt’s first democratically-elected president, Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, in 2013.

    Image copyright AFP Symbol caption Other People took to the streets of Cairo on 25 January 2011 to call for Hosni Mubarak surrender

    Mahmoud joined the throngs behind bars back in 2014, while he was once simply 18.

    His ordeal started on 25 January, the anniversary of the outbreak of the revolution. His destiny was sealed by means of his T-blouse which learn: “A nation with out torture.”

    “It used to be a day of birthday celebration for me,” mentioned Mahmoud, who has darkish curly hair and a able smile.

    “I wasn’t a part of the revolution, however i believed in it and its objectives. It made me feel like a person, with rights and tasks.

    “In This Day And Age, people see the anniversary as a black day, they concern when it comes. For me the temper was one in all party.”

    Symbol copyright AFP Image caption Supporters of Abdul Fattah al-Sisi had been allowed to take to the streets on 25 January 2014

    But then – as now – the streets have been reserved for President Sisi’s supporters. They Might gather freely, in contrast to his critics. Protests are just about banned right here.

    We witnessed police starting fireplace that day – with are living rounds – on unarmed demonstrators.

    Mahmoud mentioned he was once no longer focused on any of the protests, however that he was detained as he headed for house.

    “The officer who arrested me advised me, ‘You have my picture to your T-shirt’,” he mentioned.

    “The T-shirt was inspired through the revolution. I noticed it as a beautiful thing, no longer against the law. a rustic without torture is a dream that everybody wishes for.”

    Image copyright AFP Symbol caption Dozens died in clashes with security forces at anti-executive protests three years in the past

    That dream used to be it seems that no longer shared by means of the police he encountered that day. Mahmoud stated they quickly employed the torture abilities for which human rights groups have lengthy condemned the Egyptian police.

    “i used to be abused at the checkpoint the place i was arrested,” he advised us.

    “Then they transferred me to the police station. i used to be electrocuted on my private portions. They kicked me with their military boots, and hit me with sticks.

    “Everybody knew i was there as a result of the T-shirt. They believed this was once a private insult to them, in order that they beat me.”

    the aim, he said, was once to get him to signal a false confession.

    Symbol copyright Egyptian govt Image caption Mahmoud Hussein (centre) used to be photographed with the T-shirt reading “A nation without torture”

    “A senior officer beat me and kicked me after which requested junior law enforcement officials to do the process,” he mentioned.

    “They wanted me to signal a document announcing i used to be towards the police. I refused. The juniors have their very own tactics – if beating does not paintings, then electrocution would possibly do the job.

    “i used to be stripped naked, without even boxer shorts, and i was overwhelmed just to admit to sure fees”.

    Mahmoud asked the officials to spare his leg, which was injured within the past.

    “They insisted on kicking me and beating me on that leg,” he said.

    “because of the entire abuse and the scientific forget in jail I now want my family member, the crutch, and surgical procedures.”

    His account is in keeping with testimony from others who have been detained in recent years. We requested the Egyptian executive for a response to the allegation that detainees had been crushed and tortured in custody. there has been no reply.

    within the earlier the authorities have denied there is systematic torture, however said there could also be individual cases.

    Symbol caption Mahmoud faces charges including becoming a member of a banned terrorist workforce – one thing he denies

    Mahmoud described both bodily and psychological abuse.

    He instructed us he spent 14 months in a single overcrowded cell phone where he may barely transfer, and could now not see daylight.

    there have been about ONE HUNDRED FIFTY different prisoners, together with Islamists and males held for rape and homicide.

    “I all the time had this portion of fear,” he mentioned, “the entire time, as a result of jail is like a tomb. it is a place that takes away your soul, and kills the whole thing gorgeous in you.”

    Symbol copyright AFP Symbol caption Tens of heaps of people were jailed in a sweeping crackdown on dissent given that 2013

    Mahmoud was once launched from detention final March – following campaigns at home and out of the country.

    Whilst he’s again home together with his family in Cairo, he’s not totally unfastened.

    He nonetheless faces charges together with joining an unauthorized protest, possession of explosives and joining a banned terrorist team – all of which he denies.

    “i could go back to jail at any time,” he stated. “They Might simply pick out me walking on the side road.

    “Considering The Fact That my free up that has happened twice. i was held for a couple of hours and then they allow me pass.”

    Image copyright Getty Pictures Image caption Public grievance and non violent opposition are effectively banned in Egypt, rights activists say

    Mahmoud has also been receiving threatening phone calls.

    “One informed me i might now not have time to come back to jail,” he stated, “that means that somebody may stab me or kill me. i did not reply. I just hung up.”

    In spite of all the dangers, together with the chance that he might be placed on trial, Mahmoud refuses to be silenced.

    “In Egypt my rights and the rights of heaps of others like me are violated, just for dreaming or hoping for freedom,” he said.

    “Their destiny is jail, or loss of life. that’s not going to prevent me from talking out, or taking care of heaps like me. “

    Officials right here would not provide us a comment on allegations that all dissent is being overwhelmed.

    Symbol copyright AFP Symbol caption President Sisi said in September that “there can be no go back to dictatorship”

    President Sisi has stated within the prior that stability is extra important than freedom, however he maintains that dictatorship can not return to Egypt. Critics believe in a few key respects it never left.

    When asked if the revolution is now dead, Mahmoud gave a speedy reaction.

    “No, no longer in any respect,” he insisted. “25 January is a dream with the intention to never die. The revolution lives within the hearts of people like me, of everyone who believes in it.

    “the current regime is making an attempt desperately to erase it from reminiscence.”

    As for the T- blouse that value him his freedom, he has no regrets.

    “I always say that if i may go back, in spite of the entire abuses I suffered, i might put on the T-blouse once more,” he mentioned.

  • King Tut’s tomb has no hidden rooms, Egypt says

    New radar scans have provided conclusive evidence that there are no hidden rooms inside King Tutankhamun’s burial chamber, Egypt’s antiquities ministry said Sunday, bringing a disappointing end to yea

    CAIRO — New radar scans have provided conclusive evidence that there are no hidden rooms inside King Tutankhamun’s burial chamber, Egypt’s antiquities ministry said Sunday, bringing a disappointing end to years of excitement over the prospect.

    Mostafa Waziri, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said an Italian team conducted extensive studies with ground-penetrating radar that showed the tomb did not contain any hidden, man-made blocking walls as was earlier suspected. Francesco Porcelli of the Polytechnic University of Turin presented the findings at an international conference in Cairo.

    In 2015, British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves proposed, after analysis of high-definition laser scans, that queen Nefertiti’s tomb could be concealed behind wall paintings in the famed boy king’s burial chamber. The discovery ignited massive interest, with officials first rushing to support the theory but then later distancing themselves and ultimately rejecting it.

    The ministry says two previous scans by Japanese and American scientists had proved inconclusive, but insists this latest ground-penetrating radar data closes the lid on the tomb having such hidden secrets.

    “It is concluded, with a very high degree of confidence, said Dr. Porcelli, the hypothesis concerning the existence of hidden chambers or corridors adjacent to Tutankhamun’s tomb is not supported by the GPR data,” it said in its statement.

    The ministry has been gradually moving King Tut’s belongings to a new museum outside Cairo near the Giza Pyramids to undergo restoration before they are put on display. The transfer of the priceless belongings has become a particularly sensitive issue; In 2014 the beard attached to the ancient Egyptian monarch’s golden mask was accidentally knocked off and hastily reattached with an epoxy glue compound, sparking uproar among archaeologists.

    The fourth International Tutankhamun Conference in Cairo where Porcelli presented the findings, the most extensive radar survey of the site to date, was attended by a wide range of Egyptologists and archaeologists from the world over.

    During the conference, Antiquities Minister Khaled al-Anani said that the first phase of the new museum, including King Tut’s halls, will be completed by the end of this year but the date for the museum’s “soft opening” has yet to be decided. The museum currently hosts more than 43,200 artifacts of which over 4,500 belong to King Tut alone, and its grand opening is planned for 2022.

  • Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi: Egypt hopes in Sinai Peninsula, troubled by swap talk

    Egyptians took to the streets last year to protest President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi’s decision to give two strategically important Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia.

    CAIRO — Egyptians took to the streets last year to protest President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi’s decision to give two strategically important Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia.

    But that protest — rare in a country where Mr. el-Sissi has clamped down on the political opposition — could pale in comparison with the backlash the government would face if Mr. el-Sissi agrees to a rumored American Arab-Israeli peace plan that would ask Cairo to give up some of the Sinai Peninsula as a new homeland for Palestinians. In turn, Palestinians would cede much of the West Bank to Israeli settlers.

    Naeem Gabr, 50, general coordinator of the North Sinai Tribes, bitterly rejects the proposed swap. His association represents 11 clans numbering about 400,000 people on the peninsula.

    “Sinai is the land of our ancestors,” he said. “Palestinian refugees can live in Jordan. That’s a solution that would not disturb or undermine the Egyptian side nor Sinai tribes.”

    The Sinai swap was one of the overlooked bits of reporting from journalist Michael Wolff’s White House insider tell-all book “Fire and Fury.” Most of the attention in the U.S. focused on domestic issues, tidbits about the backstage doings of the Trump administration, and the career self-immolation of former White House top adviser Steve Bannon for agreeing to talk to the author.

    But it was the Sinai passages that attracted all the attention in Egypt.

    Steeped in biblical history, strategically located between Cairo and Israel and divided between resorts on the sun-kissed south coast and Islamic State hideouts in the rugged interior, the Sinai Peninsula has become a battleground over the future of Egypt — whether or not Mr. Wolff’s account of a Trump peace plan is accurate.

    Mr. el-Sissi has launched a succession of military operations in the peninsula, which is roughly the size of West Virginia, with the aim of uprooting jihadi groups that have launched terrorist attacks against Egyptian security forces and Coptic Christians.

    Islamic State claimed responsibility for the October 2015 downing of a passenger jet taking off from Sharm el-Sheikh and bound for St. Petersburg, Russia. The attack in the Sinai resort town, which killed 224 people, gutted tourism, one of the Egyptian economy’s biggest foreign currency generators.

    The Egyptian military revealed late last week that 16 troops had been killed and 19 wounded since the broad-scale Sinai offensive was launched in February. The Associated Press, citing army spokesman Col. Tamer al-Rifai, reported that 105 militants had been killed and nearly 3,000 fighters detained.

    The jihadis’ penetration of Sinai led to a surge of coordination between Egyptian and Israeli militaries, including joint moves to destroy tunnels that the militants used to move men and supplies in and out of Hamas-controlled Gaza, as well as the deployments of Egyptian and Israeli fighter aircraft and drones against their common enemy.

    Despite an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty dating back to the days of Anwar Sadat, direct cooperation with the Israelis remains controversial and the rumors have eroded Mr. el-Sissi’s support among Sinai’s 1.4 million inhabitants.

    “Hundreds of civilians have been killed, including men, women, children and even infants,” said Mohannad Sabry, a former Sinai resident and author of “Sinai: Egypt’s Linchpin, Gaza’s Lifeline, Israel’s Nightmare.” “Close to a dozen villages have been partially or fully destroyed by the military, and hundreds of thousands of productive trees, in farms owned by the locals, have been destroyed.”

    Reviving the economy

    Campaigning on his government’s investments in energy infrastructure and urban development, Mr. el-Sissi, a former army chief who first took power in a 2013 coup, is expected win re-election easily in the March 26-28 vote. In the face of criticism from human rights groups, many of the president’s best-known rivals have been blocked from running in the election.

    Sinai is crucial to Mr. el-Sissi’s plans to reinvigorate the economy. Egypt has deals with Israel and Cyprus that require a secure pipeline across the peninsula if the country is to capitalize on the 120 trillion cubic feet of gas discovered in the past decade in the eastern Mediterranean.

    Sinai residents killed a similar deal in January 2011, a month after the Tahrir Square revolution broke out in Cairo, by blowing up a pumping station in a El Arish. As a result, security in the region was called into question.

    Gila Gamliel, Israel’s minister of social equality, told Israel National News that she would prefer putting a Palestinian state in Sinai rather than squeezing one between Israel and Jordan, as Mr. Wolff describes in his book. She is responsible for the more than 200,000 Bedouin in Israel.

    “If it becomes clear that there is no alternative but to establish an actual Palestinian state, then this would be a regional problem, not just Israel’s,” Ms. Gamliel said in the Nov. 9 interview. “It is appropriate that parts of the Arab countries, such as the Sinai Peninsula, should be considered.”

    Israel has good reason to be concerned about Sinai.

    Radicalized Muslim Brotherhood supporters fled to the El Arish area after then-Gen. el-Sissi ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in 2013. They found a place among the Bedouin and a mixed population of Egyptians and Palestinian refugees clustered along the coastal area bordering Hamas-controlled Gaza.

    The government’s military crackdown in the peninsula initially helped the Islamic State recruit supporters there.

    “The lack of real development in Sinai helped ISIS expand and establish a foothold recruiting citizens due to the marginalization they suffered along the years,” Mr. Gabr said.

    But a deadly Islamic State attack on a mosque in the northern Sinai town of Al Rawda late last year damaged the group’s standing in the community.

    “We will not be consoled until each murderer in Sinai is eliminated, and no mercy will be shown,” said Eissa El Kareen, an elder in the El Romylat tribe who lost dozens of brothers and cousins in the massacre.

    The incident spurred Mr. el-Sissi to launch more military strikes in the region. “This attack will do nothing but make us stronger and more persistent in our effort to combat terrorism,” he said in public remarks after the unprecedented killings of 305 mostly Bedouin Muslim worshippers.

    Egypt could hardly hand over part of Sinai after such statements, said Tarek Fahmy, a professor who leads the political and strategic unit at the National Center for Middle East Studies in Cairo.

    “President el-Sissi … will not reclaim Sinai in order to leave it,” Mr. Fahmy said. “The idea is not an acceptable one for the Egyptian leadership.”