By William Fisher
Major international human rights groups are demanding that Egypt’s new military rulers immediately release all political prisoners, or charge them with a criminal offense, bring them before an independent judge, and try them before a court that meets international fair trial standards.
On February 13, 2011, the ruling High Military Council ordered the suspension of the constitution and the dissolution of parliament, and promised free and fair elections, but said nothing about prisoners and their fate.
There are thousands of political prisoners in Egypt’s jails. Of these, 1500-2000 were taken into custody during the pro-democracy demonstrations. Egypt has released 34 of these in Cairo and 16 protestors who were arrested in North Sinai province.
The release of the 34 political prisoners was ordered by the newly appointed Interior Minister, Mahmoud Wagdi. These prisoners were among those turning themselves in to the authorities after escaping from custody during the wave of prison-breaks sparked by a state of lawlessness after the massive demonstrations that started on January
25. Thousands of prisoners reportedly escaped from jails amid the nationwide uprising.
Pro-democracy protesters arrested by the police of the Ministry of the Interior told journalists of the serious abuse they suffered in custody. They were eventually turned over the Military Police.
Joe Stork of Human Rights Watch said that "Protesters initially greeted the military as their protector from the abuses of the interior ministry. While the military may have promised not to shoot protesters, it must also respect their right to freedom of assembly and their right not to be arbitrarily detained."
“The first priority of Egypt’s military authorities should be to create a government that respects human rights and establishes the rule of law,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “A good place to begin would be for the Higher Military Council to end the state of emergency and demonstrate zero tolerance for the abusive practices of the past.”
T. Kumar, Amnesty International’s Director of International Advocacy, told us, “The military council needs to release these prisoners immediately or charge them with a crime. If they simply hold them incommunicado, they will be doing exactly what President Mubarak did.”
He added that Amnesty has been demanding an honest penal system for years under Mubarak’s rule. “We’re not saying anything different now.”
In its communiqué number five on February 13, the Higher Military Council announced that it was setting up a committee to draft a new constitution to be submitted to referendum. Human Rights Watch urged the council to ensure that all bodies tasked with drafting the constitution and planning the transition to democracy are inclusive, credible, transparent, and accountable.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) recommend that military authorities should take the following six steps “to build confidence.”
· Immediately release all detainees still in military custody or charge them with a recognizable criminal offense under the regular criminal law, bring them immediately before an independent judge, and try them before a court meeting international fair trial standards;
· Ensure an independent, thorough, and transparent investigation of all credible allegations of torture by the military police over the past two weeks, including six cases reported to Human Rights Watch;
· Repeal the Emergency Law that gives the Interior Ministry broad powers to arrest and detain people arbitrarily and that limits the rights to freedom of association and peaceful assembly;
· Ensure the right to freedom of assembly by allowing for peaceful public protests as well as the right of workers to organize independent trade unions and conduct peaceful strikes;
· Publicly announce a policy of zero tolerance regarding torture or ill treatment and enforced disappearance by State Security Investigations and other ministry of interior officers as well as military officers. Instruct all security forces and members of the armed forces to refuse to obey any order to carry out such abuse and warn that they will face criminal prosecution;
· Instruct the Public Prosecutor to initiate investigations against ministry of interior officials, including senior officials, who have ordered, condoned, or carried out torture in the past, and in particular investigate State Security Investigations officers who allegedly “disappeared” detainees and subjected them to torture.
“The Egyptian military command says they intervened to guarantee the wishes of the people,” Roth said. “The paramount desire of a people who had long suffered under authoritarian rule is to uphold the rule of law and protect fundamental human rights.”
But the Council refused, for now, demands to release political prisoners and overturn Egypt's state-of-emergency law, “a legal measure [ousted President Hosni] Mubarak relied on for three decades to arrest dissidents.”
Before Mubarak’s resignation, Vice President Omar Suleiman appeared to have won the blessing of both the Mubarak and Obama administrations as the leader of a political transition toward democracy in Egypt.
But the New York Times reported that “human rights advocates say that so far Mr. Suleiman, who also is in charge of Egyptian intelligence, has shown no sign of discontinuing the practice of extra-legal detention of political opponents — a hallmark of President Hosni Mubarak’s nearly 30-year rule that is a central grievance of the protesters in the streets.”
The Military also appeared to gain widespread approval from the protesters, though many knowledgeable observers pointed out that the military police had committed more than their share of brutality and abuse of prisoners in detention.
The Guardian newspaper reported that “the Egyptian military has secretly detained hundreds and possibly thousands of suspected government opponents since mass protests against President Hosni Mubarak began, and at least some of these detainees have been tortured, according to testimony gathered by the newspaper.”
It went on to say, “The military has claimed to be neutral, merely keeping anti-Mubarak protesters and loyalists apart. But human rights campaigners say this is clearly no longer the case, accusing the army of involvement in both disappearances and torture – abuses Egyptians have for years associated with the notorious state security intelligence (SSI) but not the army.”
Who are Egypt’s “political prisoners”?
Several hundred are believed to be demonstrators who were arrested during the Tahrir Square demonstrations. The UK’S Guardian newspaper reported that journalists, human rights defenders, and youth activists were arrested “to intimidate reporting and undermine support for the Tahrir protest.”
The paper noted that “These arrests and reports of abuse in detention are exactly the types of practices that sparked the demonstrations in the first place.”
Joe Stork, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch, said the Egyptian government tortured at least five of them.
He added that, in the cases Human Rights Watch has documented, those detained, who have since been released, said that they were held incommunicado, did not have access to a lawyer, and could not inform their families about their detention.
Among the political prisoners still in detention are bloggers, journalists and political activists. Many have been convicted for insulting the president or writing articles that would negatively affect Egypt’s “image.” Both are crimes under Egyptian law.
But the majority of political prisoners are thought to be members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Among those, there are several hundred who were arrested in the period immediately preceding the Parliamentary election, which was held in November and December of 2010. The election has been widely condemned inside and outside Egypt as having been rigged.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Democracy? Not So Fast!
By William Fisher
Hey, I’m about the last guy in the world to rain on Egypt’s parade. I love the place – I used to live there. Its people are kind, smart, funny, hospitable, caring. The country has just about unlimited potential. What that non-violent army of mostly young people achieved in Tahrir Square and elsewhere was straight out of the movies. Things like this aren’t supposed to happen in real life.
But happen it did. Which means that after a couple of days of whatever wild brand of euphoria they choose, the brave folks who dumped Hosni Mubarak and his entire entourage have a nation to build. And huge problems to solve.
Even seen from 30,000 feet, those problems look daunting enough. Forty per cent of Egyptians live below the poverty line. University graduates are driving taxis and many haven’t ever had a job – or even a job interview –using the skillsets they acquired at University.
Many smart young people who have the airfare have fled to Europe and the US.
Government-sponsored children’s education is a travesty. Schools without books. Underpaid, under-qualified teachers. Public health care underfunded and under-staffed for years. Unemployment officially at 9 per cent and change; unofficially, closer to 50 per cent.
The concentration of wealth is mind-boggling: The wealthiest five per cent of Egyptians control an overwhelming part of the nation’s wealth. Forty per cent of the rest of the country lives below the poverty line. The divide between the super-rich and the super-poor has become a chasm, and corruption – both petty corruption and big ticket corruption is ubiquitous; it prices ordinary people out of normal living and makes Egyptian businesses embarrassingly uncompetitive with the rest of the world.
Issue by issue, Egypt’s new government, when it appears, is going to have to tackle all these problems in some kind of priority order. But even before that happens, there is a problem that needs to be – and can be – tackled beginning right now. That is not to say it’s an easy problem to solve, because solving it is going to require a change in behavior, a change in culture – and cultural changes are the most difficult to effect and take the longest amount of time to bear fruit.
The problem is police brutality. And the State-sanctioned impunity that accompanies it. It shows its ugly face at many levels of “law enforcement.” It is counter-productive. It puts Egypt’s most sadistic, misanthropic, and mentally ill people in positions of power where they can exercise their life-threatening skills with total impunity.
During the 17-day occupation of Tahrir Square, some 300 protesters lost their lives. A few were hit with rocks or petrol bombs. But most of those who died were picked up by the police and thrown in jail. There, they were beaten and tortured. Many of them never made it out.
Next time we hear of the great respect the protesters have for the Egyptian military, it would be useful to remember that the abusers and torturers and murderers who caused these deaths in detention were Military Police – the cops of the Army. Exactly the same group that used to be Mubarak’s Army. Chances are we’ll never know for sure who gave these guys their marching orders.
Now, every military organization has military police and a criminal investigation division, however named. But there is no need for these units to become medieval murder machines. I know; I used to be a military cop. What I learned is that these torture machines don’t happen by spontaneous combustion; someone plans for them and encourages them. And, today, two days after the resolution, these people are still there.
Here is a report by Britain’s Guardian newspaper. It is so illustrative of the problem and so totally chilling in its content that I am presenting it here in its entirety:
Thursday, February 10, in the heart of the uprising.
“The Egyptian military has secretly detained hundreds and possibly thousands of suspected government opponents since mass protests against President Hosni Mubarak began, and at least some of these detainees have been tortured, according to testimony gathered by the Guardian.
The military – accused of involvement in torture – has always claimed to be a neutral force in the conflict. The military has claimed to be neutral, merely keeping anti-Mubarak protesters and loyalists apart.
“But human rights campaigners say this is clearly no longer the case, accusing the army of involvement in both disappearances and torture – abuses Egyptians have for years associated with the notorious state security intelligence (SSI) but not the army.
“The Guardian has spoken to detainees who say they have suffered extensive beatings and other abuses at the hands of the military in what appears to be an organized campaign of intimidation. Human rights groups have documented the use of electric shocks on some of those held by the army.
Egyptian human rights groups say families are desperately searching for missing relatives who have disappeared into army custody. Some of the detainees have been held inside the renowned Museum of Egyptian Antiquities on the edge of Tahrir Square. Those released have given graphic accounts of physical abuse by soldiers who accused them of acting for foreign powers, including Hams and Israel.
“Among those detained have been human rights activists, lawyers and journalists, but most have been released. However, Hussar Begat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights in Cairo, said hundreds, and possibly thousands, of ordinary people had "disappeared" into military custody across the country for no more than carrying a political flyer, attending the demonstrations or even the way they look. Many were still missing.
"Their range is very wide, from people who were at the protests or detained for breaking curfew to those who talked back at an army officer or were handed over to the army for looking suspicious or for looking like foreigners even if they were not," he said. "It's unusual and to the best of our knowledge it's also unprecedented for the army to be doing this."
“One of those detained by the army was a 23-year-old man who would only give his first name, Ashram, for fear of again being arrested. He was detained last Friday on the edge of Tahrir Square carrying a box of medical supplies intended for one of the makeshift clinics treating protesters attacked by pro-Mubarak forces.
"I was on a side street and a soldier stopped me and asked me where I was going. I told him and he accused me of working for foreign enemies and other soldiers rushed over and they all started hitting me with their guns," he said.
“Ashram was hauled off to a makeshift army post where his hands were bound behind his back and he was beaten some more before being moved to an area under military control at the back of the museum.
"They put me in a room. An officer came and asked me who was paying me to be against the government. When I said I wanted a better government he hit me across the head and I fell to the floor. Then soldiers started kicking me. One of them kept kicking me between my legs," he said.
"They got a bayonet and threatened to rape me with it. Then they waved it between my legs. They said I could die there or I could disappear into prison and no one would ever know. The torture was painful but the idea of disappearing in a military prison was really frightening."
“Ashram said the beatings continued on and off for several hours until he was put in a room with about a dozen other men, all of whom had been severely tortured. He was let go after about 18 hours with a warning not to return to Tahrir Square.
“Others have not been so lucky. Heber Morale, a Human Rights Watch researcher in Cairo, said: "A lot of families are calling us and saying: 'I can't find my son, he's disappeared.' I think what's happening is that they're being arrested by the military."
“Among those missing is Karee Amery, a prominent government critic and logger only recently released after serving a four-year prison sentence for criticizing the regime. He was picked up on Monday evening at a military checkpoint late at night as he was leaving Tahrir Square.
“Begat said the pattern of accounts from those released showed the military had been conducting a campaign to break the protests. "Some people, especially the activists, say they were interrogated about any possible links to political organizations or any outside forces. For the ordinary protesters, they get slapped around and asked: 'Why are you in Tahrir?' It seems to serve as an interrogation operation and an intimidation and deterrence."
“The military has claimed to be neutral in the political standoff and both Mubarak and his prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, have said there will be no "security pursuit" of anti-government activists. But Morayef says this is clearly not the case.
"I think it's become pretty obvious by now that the military is not a neutral party. The military doesn't want and doesn't believe in the protests and this is even at the lower level, based on the interrogations," she said.
“Human Rights Watch says it has documented 119 arrests of civilians by the military but believes there are many more. Bahgat said it was impossible to know how many people had been detained because the army is not acknowledging the arrests. But he believes that the pattern of disappearances seen in Cairo is replicated across the country.
"Detentions either go completely unreported or they are unable to inform their family members or any lawyer of their detention so they are much more difficult to assist or look for," he said. "Those held by the military police are not receiving any due process either because they are unaccounted for and they are unable to inform anyone of their detention."
“Human Rights Watch has also documented detentions including an unnamed democracy activist who described being stopped by a soldier who insisted on searching his bag, where he found a pro-democracy flyer.
"They started beating me up in the street their rubber batons and an electric Taser gun, shocking me," the activist said.
"Then they took me to Abdin police station. By the time I arrived, the soldiers and officers there had been informed that a 'spy' was coming, and so when I arrived they gave me a 'welcome beating' that lasted some 30 minutes."
“While pro-government protesters have also been detained by the army during clashes in Tahrir Square, it is believed that they have been handed on to police and then released, rather than being held and tortured.
“The detainee was held in a cell until an interrogator arrived, ordered him to undress and attached cables from an "electric shock machine".
"He shocked me all over my body, leaving no place untouched. It wasn't a real interrogation; he didn't ask that many questions. He tortured me twice like this on Friday, and one more time on Saturday," he said.
Police brutality intrudes at many levels. The record of the Secret Security Police is better-known and arguably even more blood-curdling than that of the Military Police. The 30-year-old Emergency Laws provides cover for the most bestial enemies of the State as they continue to arrest, abuse and torture people.
Reigning in the dreaded police working for the incredibly cruel and unbelievably corrupt Ministry of Interior is another dangerous aspect of the Military’s mission. For the moment, we have to take it on faith that the Military has reached or will soon reach some agreement with the police that will result in the tamping down of their more barbarian instincts.
Police brutality in Egypt is "routine and pervasive" and the use of torture so widespread that the Egyptian government has stopped denying it exists, according to leaked cables released by WikiLeaks.
Wikileaks presents a batch of US embassy cables present a depressing picture of a police force and security service in Egypt wholly out of control. The cables suggest torture is routinely used against ordinary criminals, Islamist detainees, opposition activists and bloggers.
The Guardian writes: "The police use brutal methods mostly against common criminals to extract confessions, but also against demonstrators, certain political prisoners and unfortunate bystanders. One human rights lawyer told us there is evidence of torture in Egypt dating back to the time of the pharaohs. NGO contacts estimate there are literally hundreds of torture incidents every day in Cairo police stations alone," one cable said.
Under Hosni Mubarak's presidency there had been "no serious effort to transform the police from an instrument of regime power into a public service institution", it said. The police's ubiquitous use of force had pervaded Egyptian culture to such an extent that one popular TV soap opera recently featured a police detective hero who beat up suspects to collect evidence.
Fortunately, the pro-democracy forces won’t have to deal with Hosni Mubarak, currently reported to be in Sharm el Sheikh. Nor will it find Mubarak’s consigliere, Omar Suleiman, hanging around waiting for work.
Suleiman – Mubarak’s pointman for the U.S. rendition program -- left with this encouraging parting shot: "The culture of democracy is still far away." He added that the continued demonstrations in Cairo and across the nation were "disrespectful" of Mubarak and warned of "the dark bats of the night emerging to terrorize the people."
It would seem that Mr. Suleiman, and his boss, were just a tad out of touch with the mood of the ebullient warriors in Tahrir Square,
Putting an even finer point on it, Robert Baer, a former CIA official, summed up his view of prisoner interrogation in the Middle East. He said, “If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear—never to see them again—you send them to Egypt.”
But it’s critical that the nation-builders of Tahrir Square keep in mind that the only real changes made thus far have been to the cast of characters at the top: The president, the vice-president, the prime minister, the cabinet.
But the institutions are still where they were on January 24th. The procedures haven’t changed. The infrastructure hasn’t changed. No laws have been changed. The Constitution is still the same. The police haven’t changed. Their qualifications haven’t changed. How they view their mission hasn’t changed.
All these and many more issues are going to have to be addressed as the nation-building task goes forward. Police brutality – whether military or civilian – won’t stop by itself.
So Step One is getting someone in authority to simply say “stop” and then monitor the situation to see if instructions are being observed.
Step Two would be a team of law enforcement professionals to take a rigorous look at every aspect of arrest, detention, and the criminal justice system.
Step Three is going to have to be the development of long-term strategic plan whose goals are to gradually professionalize the performance of Egypt’s detention apparatus. And provide incentives for interrogators not to morph into murderers.
Hey, I’m about the last guy in the world to rain on Egypt’s parade. I love the place – I used to live there. Its people are kind, smart, funny, hospitable, caring. The country has just about unlimited potential. What that non-violent army of mostly young people achieved in Tahrir Square and elsewhere was straight out of the movies. Things like this aren’t supposed to happen in real life.
But happen it did. Which means that after a couple of days of whatever wild brand of euphoria they choose, the brave folks who dumped Hosni Mubarak and his entire entourage have a nation to build. And huge problems to solve.
Even seen from 30,000 feet, those problems look daunting enough. Forty per cent of Egyptians live below the poverty line. University graduates are driving taxis and many haven’t ever had a job – or even a job interview –using the skillsets they acquired at University.
Many smart young people who have the airfare have fled to Europe and the US.
Government-sponsored children’s education is a travesty. Schools without books. Underpaid, under-qualified teachers. Public health care underfunded and under-staffed for years. Unemployment officially at 9 per cent and change; unofficially, closer to 50 per cent.
The concentration of wealth is mind-boggling: The wealthiest five per cent of Egyptians control an overwhelming part of the nation’s wealth. Forty per cent of the rest of the country lives below the poverty line. The divide between the super-rich and the super-poor has become a chasm, and corruption – both petty corruption and big ticket corruption is ubiquitous; it prices ordinary people out of normal living and makes Egyptian businesses embarrassingly uncompetitive with the rest of the world.
Issue by issue, Egypt’s new government, when it appears, is going to have to tackle all these problems in some kind of priority order. But even before that happens, there is a problem that needs to be – and can be – tackled beginning right now. That is not to say it’s an easy problem to solve, because solving it is going to require a change in behavior, a change in culture – and cultural changes are the most difficult to effect and take the longest amount of time to bear fruit.
The problem is police brutality. And the State-sanctioned impunity that accompanies it. It shows its ugly face at many levels of “law enforcement.” It is counter-productive. It puts Egypt’s most sadistic, misanthropic, and mentally ill people in positions of power where they can exercise their life-threatening skills with total impunity.
During the 17-day occupation of Tahrir Square, some 300 protesters lost their lives. A few were hit with rocks or petrol bombs. But most of those who died were picked up by the police and thrown in jail. There, they were beaten and tortured. Many of them never made it out.
Next time we hear of the great respect the protesters have for the Egyptian military, it would be useful to remember that the abusers and torturers and murderers who caused these deaths in detention were Military Police – the cops of the Army. Exactly the same group that used to be Mubarak’s Army. Chances are we’ll never know for sure who gave these guys their marching orders.
Now, every military organization has military police and a criminal investigation division, however named. But there is no need for these units to become medieval murder machines. I know; I used to be a military cop. What I learned is that these torture machines don’t happen by spontaneous combustion; someone plans for them and encourages them. And, today, two days after the resolution, these people are still there.
Here is a report by Britain’s Guardian newspaper. It is so illustrative of the problem and so totally chilling in its content that I am presenting it here in its entirety:
Thursday, February 10, in the heart of the uprising.
“The Egyptian military has secretly detained hundreds and possibly thousands of suspected government opponents since mass protests against President Hosni Mubarak began, and at least some of these detainees have been tortured, according to testimony gathered by the Guardian.
The military – accused of involvement in torture – has always claimed to be a neutral force in the conflict. The military has claimed to be neutral, merely keeping anti-Mubarak protesters and loyalists apart.
“But human rights campaigners say this is clearly no longer the case, accusing the army of involvement in both disappearances and torture – abuses Egyptians have for years associated with the notorious state security intelligence (SSI) but not the army.
“The Guardian has spoken to detainees who say they have suffered extensive beatings and other abuses at the hands of the military in what appears to be an organized campaign of intimidation. Human rights groups have documented the use of electric shocks on some of those held by the army.
Egyptian human rights groups say families are desperately searching for missing relatives who have disappeared into army custody. Some of the detainees have been held inside the renowned Museum of Egyptian Antiquities on the edge of Tahrir Square. Those released have given graphic accounts of physical abuse by soldiers who accused them of acting for foreign powers, including Hams and Israel.
“Among those detained have been human rights activists, lawyers and journalists, but most have been released. However, Hussar Begat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights in Cairo, said hundreds, and possibly thousands, of ordinary people had "disappeared" into military custody across the country for no more than carrying a political flyer, attending the demonstrations or even the way they look. Many were still missing.
"Their range is very wide, from people who were at the protests or detained for breaking curfew to those who talked back at an army officer or were handed over to the army for looking suspicious or for looking like foreigners even if they were not," he said. "It's unusual and to the best of our knowledge it's also unprecedented for the army to be doing this."
“One of those detained by the army was a 23-year-old man who would only give his first name, Ashram, for fear of again being arrested. He was detained last Friday on the edge of Tahrir Square carrying a box of medical supplies intended for one of the makeshift clinics treating protesters attacked by pro-Mubarak forces.
"I was on a side street and a soldier stopped me and asked me where I was going. I told him and he accused me of working for foreign enemies and other soldiers rushed over and they all started hitting me with their guns," he said.
“Ashram was hauled off to a makeshift army post where his hands were bound behind his back and he was beaten some more before being moved to an area under military control at the back of the museum.
"They put me in a room. An officer came and asked me who was paying me to be against the government. When I said I wanted a better government he hit me across the head and I fell to the floor. Then soldiers started kicking me. One of them kept kicking me between my legs," he said.
"They got a bayonet and threatened to rape me with it. Then they waved it between my legs. They said I could die there or I could disappear into prison and no one would ever know. The torture was painful but the idea of disappearing in a military prison was really frightening."
“Ashram said the beatings continued on and off for several hours until he was put in a room with about a dozen other men, all of whom had been severely tortured. He was let go after about 18 hours with a warning not to return to Tahrir Square.
“Others have not been so lucky. Heber Morale, a Human Rights Watch researcher in Cairo, said: "A lot of families are calling us and saying: 'I can't find my son, he's disappeared.' I think what's happening is that they're being arrested by the military."
“Among those missing is Karee Amery, a prominent government critic and logger only recently released after serving a four-year prison sentence for criticizing the regime. He was picked up on Monday evening at a military checkpoint late at night as he was leaving Tahrir Square.
“Begat said the pattern of accounts from those released showed the military had been conducting a campaign to break the protests. "Some people, especially the activists, say they were interrogated about any possible links to political organizations or any outside forces. For the ordinary protesters, they get slapped around and asked: 'Why are you in Tahrir?' It seems to serve as an interrogation operation and an intimidation and deterrence."
“The military has claimed to be neutral in the political standoff and both Mubarak and his prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, have said there will be no "security pursuit" of anti-government activists. But Morayef says this is clearly not the case.
"I think it's become pretty obvious by now that the military is not a neutral party. The military doesn't want and doesn't believe in the protests and this is even at the lower level, based on the interrogations," she said.
“Human Rights Watch says it has documented 119 arrests of civilians by the military but believes there are many more. Bahgat said it was impossible to know how many people had been detained because the army is not acknowledging the arrests. But he believes that the pattern of disappearances seen in Cairo is replicated across the country.
"Detentions either go completely unreported or they are unable to inform their family members or any lawyer of their detention so they are much more difficult to assist or look for," he said. "Those held by the military police are not receiving any due process either because they are unaccounted for and they are unable to inform anyone of their detention."
“Human Rights Watch has also documented detentions including an unnamed democracy activist who described being stopped by a soldier who insisted on searching his bag, where he found a pro-democracy flyer.
"They started beating me up in the street their rubber batons and an electric Taser gun, shocking me," the activist said.
"Then they took me to Abdin police station. By the time I arrived, the soldiers and officers there had been informed that a 'spy' was coming, and so when I arrived they gave me a 'welcome beating' that lasted some 30 minutes."
“While pro-government protesters have also been detained by the army during clashes in Tahrir Square, it is believed that they have been handed on to police and then released, rather than being held and tortured.
“The detainee was held in a cell until an interrogator arrived, ordered him to undress and attached cables from an "electric shock machine".
"He shocked me all over my body, leaving no place untouched. It wasn't a real interrogation; he didn't ask that many questions. He tortured me twice like this on Friday, and one more time on Saturday," he said.
Police brutality intrudes at many levels. The record of the Secret Security Police is better-known and arguably even more blood-curdling than that of the Military Police. The 30-year-old Emergency Laws provides cover for the most bestial enemies of the State as they continue to arrest, abuse and torture people.
Reigning in the dreaded police working for the incredibly cruel and unbelievably corrupt Ministry of Interior is another dangerous aspect of the Military’s mission. For the moment, we have to take it on faith that the Military has reached or will soon reach some agreement with the police that will result in the tamping down of their more barbarian instincts.
Police brutality in Egypt is "routine and pervasive" and the use of torture so widespread that the Egyptian government has stopped denying it exists, according to leaked cables released by WikiLeaks.
Wikileaks presents a batch of US embassy cables present a depressing picture of a police force and security service in Egypt wholly out of control. The cables suggest torture is routinely used against ordinary criminals, Islamist detainees, opposition activists and bloggers.
The Guardian writes: "The police use brutal methods mostly against common criminals to extract confessions, but also against demonstrators, certain political prisoners and unfortunate bystanders. One human rights lawyer told us there is evidence of torture in Egypt dating back to the time of the pharaohs. NGO contacts estimate there are literally hundreds of torture incidents every day in Cairo police stations alone," one cable said.
Under Hosni Mubarak's presidency there had been "no serious effort to transform the police from an instrument of regime power into a public service institution", it said. The police's ubiquitous use of force had pervaded Egyptian culture to such an extent that one popular TV soap opera recently featured a police detective hero who beat up suspects to collect evidence.
Fortunately, the pro-democracy forces won’t have to deal with Hosni Mubarak, currently reported to be in Sharm el Sheikh. Nor will it find Mubarak’s consigliere, Omar Suleiman, hanging around waiting for work.
Suleiman – Mubarak’s pointman for the U.S. rendition program -- left with this encouraging parting shot: "The culture of democracy is still far away." He added that the continued demonstrations in Cairo and across the nation were "disrespectful" of Mubarak and warned of "the dark bats of the night emerging to terrorize the people."
It would seem that Mr. Suleiman, and his boss, were just a tad out of touch with the mood of the ebullient warriors in Tahrir Square,
Putting an even finer point on it, Robert Baer, a former CIA official, summed up his view of prisoner interrogation in the Middle East. He said, “If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear—never to see them again—you send them to Egypt.”
But it’s critical that the nation-builders of Tahrir Square keep in mind that the only real changes made thus far have been to the cast of characters at the top: The president, the vice-president, the prime minister, the cabinet.
But the institutions are still where they were on January 24th. The procedures haven’t changed. The infrastructure hasn’t changed. No laws have been changed. The Constitution is still the same. The police haven’t changed. Their qualifications haven’t changed. How they view their mission hasn’t changed.
All these and many more issues are going to have to be addressed as the nation-building task goes forward. Police brutality – whether military or civilian – won’t stop by itself.
So Step One is getting someone in authority to simply say “stop” and then monitor the situation to see if instructions are being observed.
Step Two would be a team of law enforcement professionals to take a rigorous look at every aspect of arrest, detention, and the criminal justice system.
Step Three is going to have to be the development of long-term strategic plan whose goals are to gradually professionalize the performance of Egypt’s detention apparatus. And provide incentives for interrogators not to morph into murderers.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Mubarak Speech: Rights Groups Confused Too
By William Fisher
As the words of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s words blasted out into Tahrir Square, the jubilant mood of the hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators there turned, first, to disbelief, then to anger.
In a rambling, often incoherent speech, the 82-year-old autocrat told the stunned crowd he would cede “some power” to his newly-minted Vice President, Omar Souleiman, but had no intention of resigning as president.
From the start of the anti-Mubarak demonstrations, the President’s total removal from office has been the bottom line. They were not likely to accept less.
For the pro-democracy forces, the crash at the end of the emotional roller-coaster they’d been rising all day was made worse by strong rumors that the Mubarak speech was to be his resignation, a possibility made to seem stronger when it was spoken to a Congressional hearing by Leon Panetta, head of the CIA, who termed his sources as usually reliable. Hopes were dashed before the actual speech by the Minister of Information, who denied that Mubarak was ready to resign.
That Murarak was handing over some of his powers to Suleiman drew boos and catcalls from the demonstrators.
One of them said to a television reporter: “That’s like Mubarak taking the country out of his left hand and giving it to his right hand. These two men are one.”
Souleiman has been Mubarak’s closest confidante for the past few years in running the military police state. Both men are from the military. Among other tasks, Sulieman has been Mubarak’s point man for relations with the CIA and the U.S. Military. As Egypt’s intelligence chief, his CIA connection put him in charge of the American government’s program of renditions. Several reputable sources have said he was personally involved in the interrogation and torture of some rendition victims.
The future relationship between the two leaders was arguably made more confusing by a “clarification” issued by the Egyptian Ambassador to the US. Speaking on CNN, he said, “Mubarak remains the de jure president of the country and Suleiman is the de facto president.”
Samer Shehata, a professor at Georgetown University, agreed that “that’s not what Mubarak said.”
Neil Hicks, a senior advisor to Human Rights First, told us, “What Mubarak said was unclear, perhaps purposefully so, but it suggested that he was delegating authority to Suleiman to oversee transition and specifically the Constitutional reforms he listed.”
International Human Rights groups were as confused as the rest of Mubarak’s audience. During the 17 days of the uprising, staff members of some of these organizations had been arrested and detained while others had been physically abused.
Amnesty International urged Egypt's authorities to ”end 30 years of repressive emergency rule and allow ordinary Egyptians to fully participate in shaping the country's future.” The organization called for a curb on the sweeping powers of security forces, the release of prisoners of conscience, and for safeguards against torture to be introduced in a new human rights action plan addressed to the country's authorities.
"Egyptians have suffered under a state of emergency for three decades; the decisions made in this momentous period will be critical for Egypt and the region," said Claudio Cordone, Senior Director at Amnesty International.
“Those now in power should view the activism on the streets of Cairo and other cities not as a threat, but as an opportunity to consign the systematic abuses of the past to history. Political transition must involve the people and foster respect for human rights," Cordone said.
Amnesty International is organizing a Global Day of Action for Egypt on
Saturday, February 12. Demonstrations are planned in 20 countries,
including the UK, Australia, Spain, France, South Korea and Norway, as well as U.S. cities including New York, Washington and several other cities.
“Mubarak’s speech is far from the needed break with the abusive system of the past 30 years,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “Cosmetic changes are not enough to meet the Egyptian people’s demands for democracy and human rights. The US and EU governments should use their influence and their aid to encourage real reform.”
Human Rights Watch said that the Egyptian military, long an integral part of the government, has been a key actor in creating and defending the repressive system currently in place in Egypt.
The Egyptian military will likely play an important role in the run-up to future elections. Senior decision-makers include a number of individuals drawn from the security forces, such as Vice President Omar Suleiman, himself a former military officer and until January 29, 2011, the head of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service; Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the minister of defense; and Prime Minister Ahmad Shafik, former head of the air force. Mubarak himself was head of the air force before then-President Anwar Sadat named him as vice president, Roth said.
He added, “Vice President Suleiman has rebuffed calls for the most basic reforms, such as repealing the Emergency Law, and instead claimed that Egyptians are ‘not ready for democracy,’” Roth said. “It’s not enough for the Egyptian government to promise constitutional change, they must dismantle the system behind the dictatorship.”
Human Rights First’s Neil Hicks said, “President Mubarak’s statement this evening has not advanced the transition towards a more democratic Egypt and has intensified the crisis. Proposals for constitutional reform supervised by regime loyalists hold no credibility. For democratic and human rights reforms to advance, power must shift decisively from President Mubarak and his military advisors, including Vice-President Omer Suleiman, to a more inclusive transitional authority.”
He continued: “This announcement increases the possibility of open confrontation between protestors and military forces, a situation that would represent the worst case scenario on the streets on Egypt. The Obama administration must use all their powers of persuasion to encourage Egypt’s leaders, and especially Egypt’s military establishment, to respond to the demands of the Egyptian people with an unequivocal and immediate move towards the formation of an inclusive transitional authority.”
Human Rights groups are concerned that the anger of pro-democracy protesters will place them in positions where they will be subject to harassment and police brutality. At the end of the speeches tonight, many of the demonstrators headed for the State Television building. That building is ordinarily heavily guarded by police and soldiers.
As the words of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s words blasted out into Tahrir Square, the jubilant mood of the hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators there turned, first, to disbelief, then to anger.
In a rambling, often incoherent speech, the 82-year-old autocrat told the stunned crowd he would cede “some power” to his newly-minted Vice President, Omar Souleiman, but had no intention of resigning as president.
From the start of the anti-Mubarak demonstrations, the President’s total removal from office has been the bottom line. They were not likely to accept less.
For the pro-democracy forces, the crash at the end of the emotional roller-coaster they’d been rising all day was made worse by strong rumors that the Mubarak speech was to be his resignation, a possibility made to seem stronger when it was spoken to a Congressional hearing by Leon Panetta, head of the CIA, who termed his sources as usually reliable. Hopes were dashed before the actual speech by the Minister of Information, who denied that Mubarak was ready to resign.
That Murarak was handing over some of his powers to Suleiman drew boos and catcalls from the demonstrators.
One of them said to a television reporter: “That’s like Mubarak taking the country out of his left hand and giving it to his right hand. These two men are one.”
Souleiman has been Mubarak’s closest confidante for the past few years in running the military police state. Both men are from the military. Among other tasks, Sulieman has been Mubarak’s point man for relations with the CIA and the U.S. Military. As Egypt’s intelligence chief, his CIA connection put him in charge of the American government’s program of renditions. Several reputable sources have said he was personally involved in the interrogation and torture of some rendition victims.
The future relationship between the two leaders was arguably made more confusing by a “clarification” issued by the Egyptian Ambassador to the US. Speaking on CNN, he said, “Mubarak remains the de jure president of the country and Suleiman is the de facto president.”
Samer Shehata, a professor at Georgetown University, agreed that “that’s not what Mubarak said.”
Neil Hicks, a senior advisor to Human Rights First, told us, “What Mubarak said was unclear, perhaps purposefully so, but it suggested that he was delegating authority to Suleiman to oversee transition and specifically the Constitutional reforms he listed.”
International Human Rights groups were as confused as the rest of Mubarak’s audience. During the 17 days of the uprising, staff members of some of these organizations had been arrested and detained while others had been physically abused.
Amnesty International urged Egypt's authorities to ”end 30 years of repressive emergency rule and allow ordinary Egyptians to fully participate in shaping the country's future.” The organization called for a curb on the sweeping powers of security forces, the release of prisoners of conscience, and for safeguards against torture to be introduced in a new human rights action plan addressed to the country's authorities.
"Egyptians have suffered under a state of emergency for three decades; the decisions made in this momentous period will be critical for Egypt and the region," said Claudio Cordone, Senior Director at Amnesty International.
“Those now in power should view the activism on the streets of Cairo and other cities not as a threat, but as an opportunity to consign the systematic abuses of the past to history. Political transition must involve the people and foster respect for human rights," Cordone said.
Amnesty International is organizing a Global Day of Action for Egypt on
Saturday, February 12. Demonstrations are planned in 20 countries,
including the UK, Australia, Spain, France, South Korea and Norway, as well as U.S. cities including New York, Washington and several other cities.
“Mubarak’s speech is far from the needed break with the abusive system of the past 30 years,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “Cosmetic changes are not enough to meet the Egyptian people’s demands for democracy and human rights. The US and EU governments should use their influence and their aid to encourage real reform.”
Human Rights Watch said that the Egyptian military, long an integral part of the government, has been a key actor in creating and defending the repressive system currently in place in Egypt.
The Egyptian military will likely play an important role in the run-up to future elections. Senior decision-makers include a number of individuals drawn from the security forces, such as Vice President Omar Suleiman, himself a former military officer and until January 29, 2011, the head of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service; Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the minister of defense; and Prime Minister Ahmad Shafik, former head of the air force. Mubarak himself was head of the air force before then-President Anwar Sadat named him as vice president, Roth said.
He added, “Vice President Suleiman has rebuffed calls for the most basic reforms, such as repealing the Emergency Law, and instead claimed that Egyptians are ‘not ready for democracy,’” Roth said. “It’s not enough for the Egyptian government to promise constitutional change, they must dismantle the system behind the dictatorship.”
Human Rights First’s Neil Hicks said, “President Mubarak’s statement this evening has not advanced the transition towards a more democratic Egypt and has intensified the crisis. Proposals for constitutional reform supervised by regime loyalists hold no credibility. For democratic and human rights reforms to advance, power must shift decisively from President Mubarak and his military advisors, including Vice-President Omer Suleiman, to a more inclusive transitional authority.”
He continued: “This announcement increases the possibility of open confrontation between protestors and military forces, a situation that would represent the worst case scenario on the streets on Egypt. The Obama administration must use all their powers of persuasion to encourage Egypt’s leaders, and especially Egypt’s military establishment, to respond to the demands of the Egyptian people with an unequivocal and immediate move towards the formation of an inclusive transitional authority.”
Human Rights groups are concerned that the anger of pro-democracy protesters will place them in positions where they will be subject to harassment and police brutality. At the end of the speeches tonight, many of the demonstrators headed for the State Television building. That building is ordinarily heavily guarded by police and soldiers.
Egypt: The Army’s (Almost) Impossible Mission
By William Fisher
The Egyptian military today faces the most formidable mission in its history. And how it acquits itself in carrying out this mission could well determine the success of the pro-democracy movement.
The stakes are enormous.
On the morning after President Hosni Mubarak’s confusing, often incoherent speech last night to hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators, the Egyptian military finds itself serving two masters. On the one side, Messrs. Mubarak, Suleiman, et al – i.e. The Regime. On the other, the Egyptian people – mobilized in their millions to demand real change they can believe in.
In the short term, the military will probably be prepared to support whatever reasonable actions Messrs. Mubarak and Suleiman think are needed to, at worst, maintain the status quo; at best, move the country toward creating the fertile soil in which democracy can flower.
Also in the short-term, I think we might now be reasonably assured that the military is not going to fire live ammunition into the Tahrir crowds, not going on a citywide sweep to arrest and detain – and torture -- human rights activists, and not hauling in the families of pro-democracy prisoners to threaten them with rape or worse.
But we should keep in mind that the military has already displayed its share of brutality against peaceful demonstrators in the current situation.
The Guardian reported that the Egyptian military has secretly detained hundreds and possibly thousands of suspected government opponents since mass protests against President Hosni Mubarak began, and at least some of these detainees have been tortured, according to testimony gathered by the newspaper,
The Guardian says, “The military has claimed to be neutral, merely keeping anti-Mubarak protesters and loyalists apart. But human rights campaigners say this is clearly no longer the case, accusing the army of involvement in both disappearances and torture – abuses Egyptians have for years associated with the notorious state security intelligence (SSI) but not the army.”
The Guardian says it has spoken to detainees who say they have suffered extensive beatings and other abuses at the hands of the military in what appears to be an organized campaign of intimidation. Human rights groups have documented the use of electric shocks on some of those held by the army.
But, we would all like to think that this is a new day, and that military brutality is not going to happen again.
Reigning in the dreaded police working for the incredibly cruel and unbelievably corrupt Ministry of Interior is another dangerous aspect of the Military’s mission. For the moment, we have to take it on faith that the Military has reached or will soon reach some agreement with the police that will result in the temping down of their more barbarian instincts.
So the Military is not going to fire into the demonstrators, nor are they going to arrest, detain and torture them. The Military will also see that the police change their modus operandi and show some respect for the protestors.
The Military will join Vice President Suleiman in exhorting the pro-democracy forces to go home, go back to work, etc. The demonstrators, smelling the blood of success, will quite likely ignore this advice, and instead expand their peaceful demonstrations to other venues beyond Tahrir, the Ministry of Information and the Presidential Palace.
Vice President Suleiman, meanwhile, may continue his meetings with component groups within the opposition, Constitutional committees, and other bodies yet to be created to figure out how to rescind the dreaded 30-year Emergency Laws and make arrangements for full and fair elections in September or later. (Or to give the appearance of being hard at work while actually accomplishing nothing.)
That remains to be seen. Another of the great unknowns is the sincerity and enthusiasm with which Suleiman takes on this job. Clearly, the language Suleiman has used toward the pro-democracy forces thus far does not inspire confidence. He told them to go home. He told them Egypt is not ready for democracy.
In the tiny sliver of this work he has tried to do thus far, he has left behind a bitter taste among his fellow conferees. He met with a delegation of pro-democracy forces last week, and immediately announced the group had reached a consensus about what had to be done. The group almost as immediately denied that any such consensus had been reached about anything.
And they noted that Sulieman always arranges to meet with elements of the opposition but never with the opposition in its entirety. Divide and conquer, perhaps, Mr. Sulieman?
The fact is that, to the millions who are protesting, Mubarak and Suleiman are Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum. After both had spoken last night, one demonstrator told a TV report: “It’s as if Mubarak took Egypt from his right hand and gave it to his left. These two guys are one.”
And, indeed, that would be substantially correct.
While Suleiman’s prospective leadership during a “transition” government was widely applauded by Western and Middle East governments, including our own, there appears to be nothing in his background that suggests he knows anything about democracy or its introduction to Egypt.
First and foremost, Suleiman is a soldier. He was head of Air Force intelligence, and is a longtime friend and confidante of Mubarak and a close ally of Washington. At a time when the nation was battling Islamic extremists, in 1993, he took over as head of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service. He is 74 years old and, like Mr. Mubarak, fought in two wars with Israel.
Sulieman has a deep suspicion about Iran. He supports Egypt’s current arrangements with Israel. He has been and wants to continue to be tough on the Muslim Brotherhood. He has dealt with Hamas, Hezbollah and Sudan.
Jane Mayer of The New Yorker writes, “Suleiman is a well-known quantity in Washington. “Suave, sophisticated, and fluent in English, he has served for years as the main conduit between the United States and Mubarak,” she writes.
“While he has a reputation for loyalty and effectiveness, he also carries some controversial baggage from the standpoint of those looking for a clean slate on human rights. As I described in my book ‘The Dark Side,’ since 1993 Suleiman has headed the feared Egyptian general intelligence service. In that capacity, he was the C.I.A.’s point man in Egypt for renditions -- the covert program in which the C.I.A. snatched terror suspects from around the world and returned them to Egypt and elsewhere for interrogation, often under brutal circumstances,” Mayer writes.
Mayer goes on to note that “Every rendition was greenlighted at the highest levels of both the U.S. and Egyptian intelligence agencies. Edward S. Walker, Jr., a former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt, said that Sulieman was cognizant that there was a downside to ‘some of the negative things that the Egyptians engaged in, of torture and so on’. But he was not squeamish, by the way."
Technically, Mayer writes, U.S. law required the C.I.A. to seek “assurances” from Egypt that rendered suspects wouldn’t face torture. But under Suleiman’s reign at the intelligence service, such assurances were considered close to worthless. As Michael Scheuer, a former C.I.A. officer who helped set up the practice of rendition, later testified before Congress, even if such “assurances” were written in indelible ink, “they weren’t worth a bucket of warm spit.”
In Ron Suskind’s book, “The One Percent Doctrine.” Katherine Hawkins, a sharp-eyed human-rights lawyer who did legal research for Mayer’s book, points out that, according to Suskind, Suleiman was the C.I.A.’s liaison for the rendition of an Al Qaeda suspect known as Ibn Sheikh al-Libi.
The Libi case is particularly controversial, in large part because it played a role in the building of the case for the American invasion of Iraq. It is generally considered a model of the proposition that torture is a very effective interrogation technique if falsehoods are the desired outcome.
Stephen Soldz, a Boston-based psychoanalysis and psychologist, notes that Suleiman's role was also highlighted in a Wikileaks cable, which said:
“In the context of the close and sustained cooperation between the USG and GOE on counterterrorism, Post believes that the written GOE assurances regarding the return of three Egyptians detained at Guantanamo represent the firm commitment of the GOE to adhere to the requested principles. These assurances were passed directly from Egyptian General Intelligence Service (EGIS) Chief [Sulieman] through liaison channels -- the most effective communication path on this issue. General [Sulieman’s] word is the GOE's guarantee, and the GOE's track record of cooperation on CT issues lends further support to this assessment.”
Meanwhile, the language used by Suleiman does not inspire confidence among the pro-democracy demonstrators. He has said he thinks Egypt is not ready for democracy. He has told the demonstrators to go home.
His detractors point to such language as indicators that he is not the man who can lead Egypt toward the future the demonstrators yearn for.
And, if this proves to be the case, Egypt would be left with one option: The Military would take control of the government and all the levers of power. They would vow to stay in power only until free and fair elections are held.
Given the blatant corruption and inhumane cruelty of the current regime, that would far from the worst outcome imaginable.
The Egyptian military today faces the most formidable mission in its history. And how it acquits itself in carrying out this mission could well determine the success of the pro-democracy movement.
The stakes are enormous.
On the morning after President Hosni Mubarak’s confusing, often incoherent speech last night to hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators, the Egyptian military finds itself serving two masters. On the one side, Messrs. Mubarak, Suleiman, et al – i.e. The Regime. On the other, the Egyptian people – mobilized in their millions to demand real change they can believe in.
In the short term, the military will probably be prepared to support whatever reasonable actions Messrs. Mubarak and Suleiman think are needed to, at worst, maintain the status quo; at best, move the country toward creating the fertile soil in which democracy can flower.
Also in the short-term, I think we might now be reasonably assured that the military is not going to fire live ammunition into the Tahrir crowds, not going on a citywide sweep to arrest and detain – and torture -- human rights activists, and not hauling in the families of pro-democracy prisoners to threaten them with rape or worse.
But we should keep in mind that the military has already displayed its share of brutality against peaceful demonstrators in the current situation.
The Guardian reported that the Egyptian military has secretly detained hundreds and possibly thousands of suspected government opponents since mass protests against President Hosni Mubarak began, and at least some of these detainees have been tortured, according to testimony gathered by the newspaper,
The Guardian says, “The military has claimed to be neutral, merely keeping anti-Mubarak protesters and loyalists apart. But human rights campaigners say this is clearly no longer the case, accusing the army of involvement in both disappearances and torture – abuses Egyptians have for years associated with the notorious state security intelligence (SSI) but not the army.”
The Guardian says it has spoken to detainees who say they have suffered extensive beatings and other abuses at the hands of the military in what appears to be an organized campaign of intimidation. Human rights groups have documented the use of electric shocks on some of those held by the army.
But, we would all like to think that this is a new day, and that military brutality is not going to happen again.
Reigning in the dreaded police working for the incredibly cruel and unbelievably corrupt Ministry of Interior is another dangerous aspect of the Military’s mission. For the moment, we have to take it on faith that the Military has reached or will soon reach some agreement with the police that will result in the temping down of their more barbarian instincts.
So the Military is not going to fire into the demonstrators, nor are they going to arrest, detain and torture them. The Military will also see that the police change their modus operandi and show some respect for the protestors.
The Military will join Vice President Suleiman in exhorting the pro-democracy forces to go home, go back to work, etc. The demonstrators, smelling the blood of success, will quite likely ignore this advice, and instead expand their peaceful demonstrations to other venues beyond Tahrir, the Ministry of Information and the Presidential Palace.
Vice President Suleiman, meanwhile, may continue his meetings with component groups within the opposition, Constitutional committees, and other bodies yet to be created to figure out how to rescind the dreaded 30-year Emergency Laws and make arrangements for full and fair elections in September or later. (Or to give the appearance of being hard at work while actually accomplishing nothing.)
That remains to be seen. Another of the great unknowns is the sincerity and enthusiasm with which Suleiman takes on this job. Clearly, the language Suleiman has used toward the pro-democracy forces thus far does not inspire confidence. He told them to go home. He told them Egypt is not ready for democracy.
In the tiny sliver of this work he has tried to do thus far, he has left behind a bitter taste among his fellow conferees. He met with a delegation of pro-democracy forces last week, and immediately announced the group had reached a consensus about what had to be done. The group almost as immediately denied that any such consensus had been reached about anything.
And they noted that Sulieman always arranges to meet with elements of the opposition but never with the opposition in its entirety. Divide and conquer, perhaps, Mr. Sulieman?
The fact is that, to the millions who are protesting, Mubarak and Suleiman are Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum. After both had spoken last night, one demonstrator told a TV report: “It’s as if Mubarak took Egypt from his right hand and gave it to his left. These two guys are one.”
And, indeed, that would be substantially correct.
While Suleiman’s prospective leadership during a “transition” government was widely applauded by Western and Middle East governments, including our own, there appears to be nothing in his background that suggests he knows anything about democracy or its introduction to Egypt.
First and foremost, Suleiman is a soldier. He was head of Air Force intelligence, and is a longtime friend and confidante of Mubarak and a close ally of Washington. At a time when the nation was battling Islamic extremists, in 1993, he took over as head of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service. He is 74 years old and, like Mr. Mubarak, fought in two wars with Israel.
Sulieman has a deep suspicion about Iran. He supports Egypt’s current arrangements with Israel. He has been and wants to continue to be tough on the Muslim Brotherhood. He has dealt with Hamas, Hezbollah and Sudan.
Jane Mayer of The New Yorker writes, “Suleiman is a well-known quantity in Washington. “Suave, sophisticated, and fluent in English, he has served for years as the main conduit between the United States and Mubarak,” she writes.
“While he has a reputation for loyalty and effectiveness, he also carries some controversial baggage from the standpoint of those looking for a clean slate on human rights. As I described in my book ‘The Dark Side,’ since 1993 Suleiman has headed the feared Egyptian general intelligence service. In that capacity, he was the C.I.A.’s point man in Egypt for renditions -- the covert program in which the C.I.A. snatched terror suspects from around the world and returned them to Egypt and elsewhere for interrogation, often under brutal circumstances,” Mayer writes.
Mayer goes on to note that “Every rendition was greenlighted at the highest levels of both the U.S. and Egyptian intelligence agencies. Edward S. Walker, Jr., a former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt, said that Sulieman was cognizant that there was a downside to ‘some of the negative things that the Egyptians engaged in, of torture and so on’. But he was not squeamish, by the way."
Technically, Mayer writes, U.S. law required the C.I.A. to seek “assurances” from Egypt that rendered suspects wouldn’t face torture. But under Suleiman’s reign at the intelligence service, such assurances were considered close to worthless. As Michael Scheuer, a former C.I.A. officer who helped set up the practice of rendition, later testified before Congress, even if such “assurances” were written in indelible ink, “they weren’t worth a bucket of warm spit.”
In Ron Suskind’s book, “The One Percent Doctrine.” Katherine Hawkins, a sharp-eyed human-rights lawyer who did legal research for Mayer’s book, points out that, according to Suskind, Suleiman was the C.I.A.’s liaison for the rendition of an Al Qaeda suspect known as Ibn Sheikh al-Libi.
The Libi case is particularly controversial, in large part because it played a role in the building of the case for the American invasion of Iraq. It is generally considered a model of the proposition that torture is a very effective interrogation technique if falsehoods are the desired outcome.
Stephen Soldz, a Boston-based psychoanalysis and psychologist, notes that Suleiman's role was also highlighted in a Wikileaks cable, which said:
“In the context of the close and sustained cooperation between the USG and GOE on counterterrorism, Post believes that the written GOE assurances regarding the return of three Egyptians detained at Guantanamo represent the firm commitment of the GOE to adhere to the requested principles. These assurances were passed directly from Egyptian General Intelligence Service (EGIS) Chief [Sulieman] through liaison channels -- the most effective communication path on this issue. General [Sulieman’s] word is the GOE's guarantee, and the GOE's track record of cooperation on CT issues lends further support to this assessment.”
Meanwhile, the language used by Suleiman does not inspire confidence among the pro-democracy demonstrators. He has said he thinks Egypt is not ready for democracy. He has told the demonstrators to go home.
His detractors point to such language as indicators that he is not the man who can lead Egypt toward the future the demonstrators yearn for.
And, if this proves to be the case, Egypt would be left with one option: The Military would take control of the government and all the levers of power. They would vow to stay in power only until free and fair elections are held.
Given the blatant corruption and inhumane cruelty of the current regime, that would far from the worst outcome imaginable.
Monday, February 07, 2011
Why Israel Fears a Post-Mubarak Egypt
By William Fisher
One of my readers in the Netherlands posed a question about how a new post-Mubarak Egypt might impact Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. He wrote:
“I am again appalled by the lack of relation in the comments between the US position on Israel and Egypt, Mubarak. Why is everybody so afraid of that lobby you think?”
The lobby he was referring to is AIPAC, the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Council, which advocates for Israeli positions in the United States. AIPAC is the largest pro-Israel organization in the U.S., and is highly influential at many levels of U.S. Government, from Congress to the White House.
Why are the Israelis and AIPAC worried about the implications of the dramatic struggle currently pitting pro-Democracy Egyptians against those who support the government of President Hosni Mubarak.
The Israelis’ worst nightmare: A new regime comes to power in Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood occupies a major position in a governing coalition. Egypt trashes its 32-year peace treaty with Israel, allows arms to be shipped from Egypt to Hamas in Gaza, and ends its role in peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Is there any factual basis for Israeli fears? Research carried out in Egypt by the Pew Global Attitudes Project on “Egypt, Democracy and Islam,” may provide some answers.
Last Spring, Richard Auxier of the Pew Research Center examined the views of Egyptians and six other Muslim publics about politics and the role Islam should play in it.
They found that, while a 59%-majority of Muslims in Egypt believed that democracy was preferable to any other kind of government, 59 percent also said they back Islamists, and 95% of them said they would welcome Islamic influence over their politics.
Pew also found that 50 per cent of Egyptians support Hamas, 30 per cent support Hizbullah and 20 per cent support al Qaeda.
Eighty-two percent of Egyptians support executing adulterers by stoning, 77% support whipping and cutting the hands off thieves, and 84% support executing any Muslim who changes his religion, the Pew survey found.
The Pew researchers concluded that “The Islam [the Egyptians] support is “the al Qaeda Salafist version.”
They found that support for democracy was much lower among Egyptians than it is elsewhere in the Middle East. In Lebanon, 81% preferred it to any other kind of government. “In Turkey, 76% of Muslims supported it. Roughly two-thirds of Muslims also preferred democracy to any other kind of government in Jordan (69%), Nigeria (66%) and Indonesia (65%),” the research revealed.
Among the Muslim publics surveyed, only in Pakistan (42%) did fewer Muslims say democracy was preferable to any other kind of government than in Egypt.
Pew’s Auxier also found that, by wide margins, Muslims believed that Islam's influence in politics was positive rather than negative. In Egypt, Islam's role in politics was seen favorably by an overwhelming 85%-to-2% margin among Muslims, he wrote.
He also concluded:
Islam was seen as a positive rather than negative influence in politics by equally impressive margins in Indonesia (91% to 6%), Nigeria (82% to 10%), Jordan (76% to 14%) and Pakistan (69% to 6%).
Concerns about Islamic extremism -- both in their country and around the world -- were widespread in Egypt. About six-in-ten Egyptians were very (20%) or somewhat (41%) concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism in their country.
By comparison, at least three-quarters in Lebanon (80%) and Nigeria (76%) were concerned about Islamic extremism in their nation, while less than half expressed such concern in Jordan (44%) and Turkey (43%).
Asked about extremism around the world, 30% of Egyptians were very concerned about Islamic extremism and 40% were somewhat concerned.
Large majorities in five of the other Muslim publics surveyed also expressed concern about Islamic extremism around the world. Only in Turkey did a majority not express concern.
Egyptians were split on how big a role Islam played in the political life of their country. Among Muslims in Egypt, 48% said Islam played a large role in their nation's political life while a nearly equal 49% said it played only a small role.
Divisions about the perception of Islam's role in politics were also seen in Lebanon and Pakistan.
In contrast, Muslims in Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey overwhelmingly agreed that Islam played a large role in their politics.
In Lebanon and Turkey, close to a third said that Islam had a negative influence in politics, but in both nations more believed Islam's influence was positive than said it was negative.
Respondents who had a positive view of Islam's influence included both those who said Islam was playing a large role in their country's political life and saw this as a good thing and those who said Islam was playing a small role and saw this as a bad thing. The reverse was true for those respondents who had a negative view of Islam's influence.
Asked whether there is a struggle in their nations between those who want to modernize their country and Islamic fundamentalists, a 61%-majority of Muslims in Egypt said they did not see a struggle. Just 31% of Egyptian Muslims saw a struggle between modernizers and fundamentalists in their country. Among the seven Muslim publics surveyed in 2010, only in Jordan (20%) did fewer say they saw such a struggle.
Among Egyptian Muslims who did see a struggle, a 59%-majority sided with the fundamentalists. Just 27% of those who saw such struggle sided with the modernizers.
This stands in sharp contrast with four other Muslim publics surveyed. Many more Muslims in Lebanon, Turkey, Pakistan and Indonesia than in Egypt said they saw a struggle between modernizers and fundamentalists in their country.
In each of these nations, though, a majority of those seeing a conflict sided with the modernizers. Nigeria was the only other country surveyed in which a majority of Muslims who saw such a conflict identified with the fundamentalists.
Concerns about Islamic extremism -- both in their country and around the world -- were widespread in Egypt. About six-in-ten Egyptians said they were very (20%) or somewhat (41%) concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism in their country.
By comparison, at least three-quarters in Lebanon (80%) and Nigeria (76%) said they were concerned about Islamic extremism in their nation, while less than half expressed such concern in Jordan (44%) and Turkey (43%).
Asked about extremism around the world, 30% of Egyptians said they were very concerned about Islamic extremism and 40% were somewhat concerned.
Large majorities in five of the other Muslim publics surveyed also expressed concern about Islamic extremism around the world. Only in Turkey did a majority not express concern, Auxier’s research found.
So are the worries of the Israelis and their U.S. spokesman justified?
Many observers believe that the Islamist component of the pro-democracy movement in Egypt does not bode well for Israel. They acknowledge that the Muslim Brotherhood appears to have moderated its strategy and tactics over the years. But they believe that the face the Brotherhood is currently showing to the world is simply a device to exploit the pro-democracy movement to their advantage. They do not trust the sincerity of the Brotherhood’s current leaders and deny that the Brotherhood now belongs in the mainstream of Egyptian politics.
They also believe that for every Egyptian who is a member of the Brotherhood, a majority of Egyptians are not members but agree with the organization’s objectives. They say that, outside Egypt, the Brotherhood’s main objective is to empower the Palestinians to defeat the Israelis.
This is the view that appears to have been adopted by those at the more conservative end of the U.S. political spectrum.
At the other end, many more liberal analysts contend that fears of the Muslim Brotherhood have been exaggerated and are being used as a scare tactic to turn international public opinion against President Mubarak’s immediate resignation.
The Brotherhood is officially illegal in Egypt. But it is tolerated and its members run for Parliament as “independents.”
These observers point out that, in elections in Egypt, the Brotherhood has never been able to garner more than 20 per cent of the vote. They also believe that, for the near-term future, a post-Mubarak Egypt would probably be headed by a coalition government of national unity. The diverse composition of that governing coalition, they say, would reign in any radical objectives the Muslim Brotherhood might want to achieve.
At this stage in the pro-democracy movement, no one can say with any certainty that he/she knows which way Egypt will turn. The only thing we know for certain is that Egypt will never be the same again.
One of my readers in the Netherlands posed a question about how a new post-Mubarak Egypt might impact Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. He wrote:
“I am again appalled by the lack of relation in the comments between the US position on Israel and Egypt, Mubarak. Why is everybody so afraid of that lobby you think?”
The lobby he was referring to is AIPAC, the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Council, which advocates for Israeli positions in the United States. AIPAC is the largest pro-Israel organization in the U.S., and is highly influential at many levels of U.S. Government, from Congress to the White House.
Why are the Israelis and AIPAC worried about the implications of the dramatic struggle currently pitting pro-Democracy Egyptians against those who support the government of President Hosni Mubarak.
The Israelis’ worst nightmare: A new regime comes to power in Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood occupies a major position in a governing coalition. Egypt trashes its 32-year peace treaty with Israel, allows arms to be shipped from Egypt to Hamas in Gaza, and ends its role in peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Is there any factual basis for Israeli fears? Research carried out in Egypt by the Pew Global Attitudes Project on “Egypt, Democracy and Islam,” may provide some answers.
Last Spring, Richard Auxier of the Pew Research Center examined the views of Egyptians and six other Muslim publics about politics and the role Islam should play in it.
They found that, while a 59%-majority of Muslims in Egypt believed that democracy was preferable to any other kind of government, 59 percent also said they back Islamists, and 95% of them said they would welcome Islamic influence over their politics.
Pew also found that 50 per cent of Egyptians support Hamas, 30 per cent support Hizbullah and 20 per cent support al Qaeda.
Eighty-two percent of Egyptians support executing adulterers by stoning, 77% support whipping and cutting the hands off thieves, and 84% support executing any Muslim who changes his religion, the Pew survey found.
The Pew researchers concluded that “The Islam [the Egyptians] support is “the al Qaeda Salafist version.”
They found that support for democracy was much lower among Egyptians than it is elsewhere in the Middle East. In Lebanon, 81% preferred it to any other kind of government. “In Turkey, 76% of Muslims supported it. Roughly two-thirds of Muslims also preferred democracy to any other kind of government in Jordan (69%), Nigeria (66%) and Indonesia (65%),” the research revealed.
Among the Muslim publics surveyed, only in Pakistan (42%) did fewer Muslims say democracy was preferable to any other kind of government than in Egypt.
Pew’s Auxier also found that, by wide margins, Muslims believed that Islam's influence in politics was positive rather than negative. In Egypt, Islam's role in politics was seen favorably by an overwhelming 85%-to-2% margin among Muslims, he wrote.
He also concluded:
Islam was seen as a positive rather than negative influence in politics by equally impressive margins in Indonesia (91% to 6%), Nigeria (82% to 10%), Jordan (76% to 14%) and Pakistan (69% to 6%).
Concerns about Islamic extremism -- both in their country and around the world -- were widespread in Egypt. About six-in-ten Egyptians were very (20%) or somewhat (41%) concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism in their country.
By comparison, at least three-quarters in Lebanon (80%) and Nigeria (76%) were concerned about Islamic extremism in their nation, while less than half expressed such concern in Jordan (44%) and Turkey (43%).
Asked about extremism around the world, 30% of Egyptians were very concerned about Islamic extremism and 40% were somewhat concerned.
Large majorities in five of the other Muslim publics surveyed also expressed concern about Islamic extremism around the world. Only in Turkey did a majority not express concern.
Egyptians were split on how big a role Islam played in the political life of their country. Among Muslims in Egypt, 48% said Islam played a large role in their nation's political life while a nearly equal 49% said it played only a small role.
Divisions about the perception of Islam's role in politics were also seen in Lebanon and Pakistan.
In contrast, Muslims in Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey overwhelmingly agreed that Islam played a large role in their politics.
In Lebanon and Turkey, close to a third said that Islam had a negative influence in politics, but in both nations more believed Islam's influence was positive than said it was negative.
Respondents who had a positive view of Islam's influence included both those who said Islam was playing a large role in their country's political life and saw this as a good thing and those who said Islam was playing a small role and saw this as a bad thing. The reverse was true for those respondents who had a negative view of Islam's influence.
Asked whether there is a struggle in their nations between those who want to modernize their country and Islamic fundamentalists, a 61%-majority of Muslims in Egypt said they did not see a struggle. Just 31% of Egyptian Muslims saw a struggle between modernizers and fundamentalists in their country. Among the seven Muslim publics surveyed in 2010, only in Jordan (20%) did fewer say they saw such a struggle.
Among Egyptian Muslims who did see a struggle, a 59%-majority sided with the fundamentalists. Just 27% of those who saw such struggle sided with the modernizers.
This stands in sharp contrast with four other Muslim publics surveyed. Many more Muslims in Lebanon, Turkey, Pakistan and Indonesia than in Egypt said they saw a struggle between modernizers and fundamentalists in their country.
In each of these nations, though, a majority of those seeing a conflict sided with the modernizers. Nigeria was the only other country surveyed in which a majority of Muslims who saw such a conflict identified with the fundamentalists.
Concerns about Islamic extremism -- both in their country and around the world -- were widespread in Egypt. About six-in-ten Egyptians said they were very (20%) or somewhat (41%) concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism in their country.
By comparison, at least three-quarters in Lebanon (80%) and Nigeria (76%) said they were concerned about Islamic extremism in their nation, while less than half expressed such concern in Jordan (44%) and Turkey (43%).
Asked about extremism around the world, 30% of Egyptians said they were very concerned about Islamic extremism and 40% were somewhat concerned.
Large majorities in five of the other Muslim publics surveyed also expressed concern about Islamic extremism around the world. Only in Turkey did a majority not express concern, Auxier’s research found.
So are the worries of the Israelis and their U.S. spokesman justified?
Many observers believe that the Islamist component of the pro-democracy movement in Egypt does not bode well for Israel. They acknowledge that the Muslim Brotherhood appears to have moderated its strategy and tactics over the years. But they believe that the face the Brotherhood is currently showing to the world is simply a device to exploit the pro-democracy movement to their advantage. They do not trust the sincerity of the Brotherhood’s current leaders and deny that the Brotherhood now belongs in the mainstream of Egyptian politics.
They also believe that for every Egyptian who is a member of the Brotherhood, a majority of Egyptians are not members but agree with the organization’s objectives. They say that, outside Egypt, the Brotherhood’s main objective is to empower the Palestinians to defeat the Israelis.
This is the view that appears to have been adopted by those at the more conservative end of the U.S. political spectrum.
At the other end, many more liberal analysts contend that fears of the Muslim Brotherhood have been exaggerated and are being used as a scare tactic to turn international public opinion against President Mubarak’s immediate resignation.
The Brotherhood is officially illegal in Egypt. But it is tolerated and its members run for Parliament as “independents.”
These observers point out that, in elections in Egypt, the Brotherhood has never been able to garner more than 20 per cent of the vote. They also believe that, for the near-term future, a post-Mubarak Egypt would probably be headed by a coalition government of national unity. The diverse composition of that governing coalition, they say, would reign in any radical objectives the Muslim Brotherhood might want to achieve.
At this stage in the pro-democracy movement, no one can say with any certainty that he/she knows which way Egypt will turn. The only thing we know for certain is that Egypt will never be the same again.
Rule of Law, Iraqi Style
By William Fisher
Egypt’s pro-democracy uprising has pushed almost all other news – with the possible exception of the Superbowl -- off front pages and TV screens.
But while that dramatic collision plays out, news is being made elsewhere as well. And some of it is critical.
For example, a few days ago Human Rights Watch revealed that elite security forces controlled by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki are operating a secret detention site in Baghdad, and torturing detainees with impunity at another Baghdad facility.
Here’s what HRW reported:
Beginning on November 23, 2010, and continuing over the next three to four days, Iraqi authorities transferred more than 280 detainees to a secret site within Camp Justice, a sprawling military base in northwest Baghdad, interviews and classified government documents obtained by Human Rights Watch reveal. The Army's 56th Brigade, also known as the Baghdad Brigade, and the Counter-Terrorism Service, both under the authority of the prime minister's office, control this secret site.
The hurried transfers took place just days before an international inspection team was to examine conditions at the detainees' previous location at Camp Honor in the Green Zone. Human Rights Watch has also obtained a list of more than 300 detainees held at Camp Honor just before the transfer to Camp Justice. Almost all were accused of terrorism.
"Revelations of secret jails in the heart of Baghdad completely undermine the Iraqi government's promises to respect the rule of law," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "The government needs to close these places or move them under control of the justice system, improve conditions for detainees, and make sure that anyone responsible for torture is punished."
The Iraqi government should immediately close the facilities or regularize their position and make them open for inspections and visits, Human Rights Watch said.
Detainee torture and abuse is nothing new in Iraq. Cables recently released by Wikileaks reveal that the deaths of Iraqi civilians caused by both Iraqis and the American military are more numerous than the numbers released during the Bush administration.
The New York Times reported: “While the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by Americans, particularly at the Abu Ghraib prison, shocked the American public and much of the world, the documents paint an even more lurid picture of abuse by America’s Iraqi allies — a brutality from which the Americans at times averted their eyes.”
Human Rights Watch reported that approximately 80 of the 280 detainees are being held by the 56th Brigade at the secret site at Camp Justice and have had no access to lawyers or family members. Prison inspectors are not permitted to conduct visits to the section of the facility controlled by the 56th brigade, prompting fresh concerns that the brigade may be torturing detainees.
According to government sources, the Counter-Terrorism Service is holding the 200 remaining transferred detainees, although the 56th Brigade maintains primary responsibility for security at the site in Baghdad's Kadhmiya neighborhood.
In one of the 18 documents obtained by Human Rights Watch, a letter from the prosecutor's office of the Higher Judicial Council asks the Office of the Prime Minister to instruct officials at the Camp Justice site to stop preventing prison inspectors and relatives from visiting detainees. The letter, dated December 6, 2010, says such a refusal "meets neither legal nor humanitarian standards, unless [the refusal is] specifically ordered by a judge at a specialized court."
A second letter, dated January 13, 2011, from the justice minister to the Office of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, through which the prime minister controls Iraqi security forces, stated that a 56th Brigade officer prevented prison inspectors from the Human Rights Ministry from visiting the site.
The secret detention site is located within a legitimate Justice Ministry detention facility at Camp Justice, known as Justice 2 (Sijn al-Adaleh 2), which holds just over 1,000 other detainees. Camp Justice is the site of the former "Fifth Department" (al-Sha'ba al-Khamsa) intelligence office notorious during the rule of Saddam Hussein for torture and disappearances. The former dictator was executed there in 2006.
Camp Honor, from which the detainees were transferred, became the subject of media scrutiny on January 23, after the Los Angeles Times uncovered abuse there and described the conditions as "miserable." The article said detainees were held in cramped windowless cells that reeked of human excrement.
Recent interviews by Human Rights Watch of more than a dozen former detainees from Camp Honor had documented how detainees are held incommunicado and in inhumane conditions, often for months at a time. Detainees described in detail the wide ranging abuses they endured during interrogation sessions at the facility, usually to extract false confessions. They said interrogators beat them, hung them upside down for hours at a time, administered electric shocks to various body parts, including the genitals, and asphyxiated them repeatedly with plastic bags put over their heads until they passed out.
In interviews with Human Rights Watch in December, former detainees described the abuse at Camp Honor:
•One detainee said on December 26 that: "The cell was so crowded that we had to take turns standing and lying down, and would try to let someone lie down if they were an old man, or especially if they had just been brought back from interrogation. Then we usually could not stand."
•Another said on December 18 that: "I was blindfolded and put on the floor, face-down with my hands tied tightly behind my back. The interrogator stepped on my arms, and put more and more weight down on them until I was screaming."
•A third detainee, who had been held in Camp Honor the summer of 2010, said in a December 27 interview: "My hands were tied over my head and my feet were put in water, then they shocked me in my head and my neck and my chest. The interrogators beat me repeatedly and told me that they would go to my house and rape my sister if I did not sign a confession, so I did. I did not even know what I was confessing to."
In response to the Los Angeles Times article, which said Camp Honor is run by the 56th Brigade and the Counter-Terrorism Service, Iraq's deputy justice minister, Busho Ibrahim, told Agence France-Presse on January 24 that his ministry alone controlled the site.
"It is my responsibility, and I deny all these accusations - they are all lies," he said. "Families can visit their sons or husbands, lawyers can visit them regularly. It's like any other prison run by the Justice Ministry."
He reiterated, "It is not true that it follows Maliki's orders - it is run by the Justice Ministry."
However, HRW claims that documents they have obtained refute government claims that Camp Honor is controlled by the Justice Ministry. In one classified document dated August 2, 2010, the former justice minister, Dara Nour al-Din, requested that his staff obtain approval from the Office of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces to transfer detainees from Camp Honor, demonstrating the ministry's subordinate role at the facility.
In the note to his staff, the justice minister asks them to write a letter to the Office of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces "requesting permission for custody of the prisoners to be turned over" to the ministry so they can be transferred elsewhere. The document indicates that the issue arose after Deputy Justice Minister Ibrahim acknowledged that his ministry could not transfer detainees due to external interference, particularly from military interrogators.
Another document, from October 2010, signed by Ibrahim himself, says the ministry "has no objection to allowing lawyers and families to visit detainees" at Camp Honor but that, "it is only the tough security measures implemented by the Defense Ministry/56th Brigade section [of the prison] and the Counter-Terrorism administration section, and also the location of the prison in the Green Zone, that has prevented this."
In response to the Los Angeles Times article, Ibrahim also said that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had visited the Camp Honor prison. But when contacted by Human Rights Watch, the ICRC spokesperson, Graziella Leite Piccolo, said that ICRC had not been able to visit Camp Honor because the government had not met the organization's criteria for such site visits, including access to the entire facility and its detainees.
"It is important to note that, even if we had been able to visit, a visit alone is not a certificate of validation, but part of a process," she said. Government sources told Human Rights Watch that authorities have prevented the Human Rights Ministry from conducting any prison inspections at Camp Honor for more than a year.
Several government sources said that although the 56th Brigade, and its sibling, the 54th Brigade, technically fall under Defense Ministry administration, the brigades' chain of command bypass the ministry. They do not report to the defense minister or army chief of staff, but instead to Maliki through the Office of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. Through this office, the prime minister also controls the Counter-Terrorism Service, which falls under no ministry and is not governed by any legislation. The Counter-Terrorism Service works closely with US Special Forces.
Military officers and officials from both the Defense and Interior ministries told Human Rights Watch that the 56th Brigade and the Counter-Terrorism Service routinely conduct operations, including mass arrests and detentions, without notifying the security ministries. A high-level Interior Ministry officer told Human Rights Watch on December 18 that these units "create confusion and a dangerous atmosphere where special units who have a separate authority storm in and take people." The official said that regular security forces were afraid of these elite forces.
Another official, from the Defense Ministry, told Human Rights Watch on January 23 that contrary to the usual practice, in which security forces process detainees through the main prison system, the 56th and 54th Brigades often refuse to give up their prisoners.
"Their families and lawyers cannot visit them," he said, "and sometimes cannot even find out if they are dead or alive."
Defense Ministry officials interviewed by Human Rights Watch said there is close cooperation between the 56th and 54th Brigades, commonly referred to by military and police as "Maliki's forces." Prisoners arrested and initially held in the prison run by one brigade are often transferred to the prison run by the other.
An Interior Ministry official told Human Rights Watch on January 13 that "people come to police stations or prisons looking for their family members who have been arrested. If we find out they were taken by Maliki's forces, we don't get any information about them or have jurisdiction to do anything."
Last year, the Human Rights Ministry uncovered a secret prison run by the 54th Brigade, with the assistance of the 56th Brigade, in the old Muthanna airport in Western Baghdad. In April, Human Rights Watch interviewed 42 detainees who had been tortured at this facility over a period of months. The secret prison held about 430 detainees who had no access to their families or lawyers.
The prisoners said security forces personnel kicked, whipped, and beat them, asphyxiated them, gave them electric shocks, burned them with cigarettes, and pulled out their fingernails and teeth. They said that interrogators sodomized some detainees with sticks and pistol barrels. Some young men said they had been forced to perform oral sex on interrogators and guards, and that interrogators forced detainees to molest one another sexually.
A US Embassy cable viewed by the Los Angeles Times stated that 56th Brigade interrogators had been sent to Muthanna from Camp Honor. A separate cable said the brigade "reports directly to the prime minister's office."
At the time, Maliki described the prison at Muthanna as a transit site under the control of the Defense Ministry.
However, a high-ranking Defense Ministry official distanced his ministry from the allegations of torture at Muthanna. In a classified letter to the Human Rights Ministry dated May 3, 2010, and seen by Human Rights Watch, Saleh Sarhan, general secretary to the defense minister, wrote: "Our ministry has no relationship with those military investigation committees nor to the Sur Ninewa [Muthanna] Detention Center, because both are attached to the Office of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces."
If this information were about any other country in the Middle East, we would say, “Well, that’s the way it is in that part of the world. The Arabs just torture people they have in their custody.”
But this is not just any Middle East power. This is Iraq – a country the U.S. invaded to end a brutal tyranny and allow Democracy to flower.
If the information published by Human Rights Watch is correct, the task will take a lot more Miracle-Gro.
Egypt’s pro-democracy uprising has pushed almost all other news – with the possible exception of the Superbowl -- off front pages and TV screens.
But while that dramatic collision plays out, news is being made elsewhere as well. And some of it is critical.
For example, a few days ago Human Rights Watch revealed that elite security forces controlled by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki are operating a secret detention site in Baghdad, and torturing detainees with impunity at another Baghdad facility.
Here’s what HRW reported:
Beginning on November 23, 2010, and continuing over the next three to four days, Iraqi authorities transferred more than 280 detainees to a secret site within Camp Justice, a sprawling military base in northwest Baghdad, interviews and classified government documents obtained by Human Rights Watch reveal. The Army's 56th Brigade, also known as the Baghdad Brigade, and the Counter-Terrorism Service, both under the authority of the prime minister's office, control this secret site.
The hurried transfers took place just days before an international inspection team was to examine conditions at the detainees' previous location at Camp Honor in the Green Zone. Human Rights Watch has also obtained a list of more than 300 detainees held at Camp Honor just before the transfer to Camp Justice. Almost all were accused of terrorism.
"Revelations of secret jails in the heart of Baghdad completely undermine the Iraqi government's promises to respect the rule of law," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "The government needs to close these places or move them under control of the justice system, improve conditions for detainees, and make sure that anyone responsible for torture is punished."
The Iraqi government should immediately close the facilities or regularize their position and make them open for inspections and visits, Human Rights Watch said.
Detainee torture and abuse is nothing new in Iraq. Cables recently released by Wikileaks reveal that the deaths of Iraqi civilians caused by both Iraqis and the American military are more numerous than the numbers released during the Bush administration.
The New York Times reported: “While the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by Americans, particularly at the Abu Ghraib prison, shocked the American public and much of the world, the documents paint an even more lurid picture of abuse by America’s Iraqi allies — a brutality from which the Americans at times averted their eyes.”
Human Rights Watch reported that approximately 80 of the 280 detainees are being held by the 56th Brigade at the secret site at Camp Justice and have had no access to lawyers or family members. Prison inspectors are not permitted to conduct visits to the section of the facility controlled by the 56th brigade, prompting fresh concerns that the brigade may be torturing detainees.
According to government sources, the Counter-Terrorism Service is holding the 200 remaining transferred detainees, although the 56th Brigade maintains primary responsibility for security at the site in Baghdad's Kadhmiya neighborhood.
In one of the 18 documents obtained by Human Rights Watch, a letter from the prosecutor's office of the Higher Judicial Council asks the Office of the Prime Minister to instruct officials at the Camp Justice site to stop preventing prison inspectors and relatives from visiting detainees. The letter, dated December 6, 2010, says such a refusal "meets neither legal nor humanitarian standards, unless [the refusal is] specifically ordered by a judge at a specialized court."
A second letter, dated January 13, 2011, from the justice minister to the Office of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, through which the prime minister controls Iraqi security forces, stated that a 56th Brigade officer prevented prison inspectors from the Human Rights Ministry from visiting the site.
The secret detention site is located within a legitimate Justice Ministry detention facility at Camp Justice, known as Justice 2 (Sijn al-Adaleh 2), which holds just over 1,000 other detainees. Camp Justice is the site of the former "Fifth Department" (al-Sha'ba al-Khamsa) intelligence office notorious during the rule of Saddam Hussein for torture and disappearances. The former dictator was executed there in 2006.
Camp Honor, from which the detainees were transferred, became the subject of media scrutiny on January 23, after the Los Angeles Times uncovered abuse there and described the conditions as "miserable." The article said detainees were held in cramped windowless cells that reeked of human excrement.
Recent interviews by Human Rights Watch of more than a dozen former detainees from Camp Honor had documented how detainees are held incommunicado and in inhumane conditions, often for months at a time. Detainees described in detail the wide ranging abuses they endured during interrogation sessions at the facility, usually to extract false confessions. They said interrogators beat them, hung them upside down for hours at a time, administered electric shocks to various body parts, including the genitals, and asphyxiated them repeatedly with plastic bags put over their heads until they passed out.
In interviews with Human Rights Watch in December, former detainees described the abuse at Camp Honor:
•One detainee said on December 26 that: "The cell was so crowded that we had to take turns standing and lying down, and would try to let someone lie down if they were an old man, or especially if they had just been brought back from interrogation. Then we usually could not stand."
•Another said on December 18 that: "I was blindfolded and put on the floor, face-down with my hands tied tightly behind my back. The interrogator stepped on my arms, and put more and more weight down on them until I was screaming."
•A third detainee, who had been held in Camp Honor the summer of 2010, said in a December 27 interview: "My hands were tied over my head and my feet were put in water, then they shocked me in my head and my neck and my chest. The interrogators beat me repeatedly and told me that they would go to my house and rape my sister if I did not sign a confession, so I did. I did not even know what I was confessing to."
In response to the Los Angeles Times article, which said Camp Honor is run by the 56th Brigade and the Counter-Terrorism Service, Iraq's deputy justice minister, Busho Ibrahim, told Agence France-Presse on January 24 that his ministry alone controlled the site.
"It is my responsibility, and I deny all these accusations - they are all lies," he said. "Families can visit their sons or husbands, lawyers can visit them regularly. It's like any other prison run by the Justice Ministry."
He reiterated, "It is not true that it follows Maliki's orders - it is run by the Justice Ministry."
However, HRW claims that documents they have obtained refute government claims that Camp Honor is controlled by the Justice Ministry. In one classified document dated August 2, 2010, the former justice minister, Dara Nour al-Din, requested that his staff obtain approval from the Office of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces to transfer detainees from Camp Honor, demonstrating the ministry's subordinate role at the facility.
In the note to his staff, the justice minister asks them to write a letter to the Office of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces "requesting permission for custody of the prisoners to be turned over" to the ministry so they can be transferred elsewhere. The document indicates that the issue arose after Deputy Justice Minister Ibrahim acknowledged that his ministry could not transfer detainees due to external interference, particularly from military interrogators.
Another document, from October 2010, signed by Ibrahim himself, says the ministry "has no objection to allowing lawyers and families to visit detainees" at Camp Honor but that, "it is only the tough security measures implemented by the Defense Ministry/56th Brigade section [of the prison] and the Counter-Terrorism administration section, and also the location of the prison in the Green Zone, that has prevented this."
In response to the Los Angeles Times article, Ibrahim also said that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had visited the Camp Honor prison. But when contacted by Human Rights Watch, the ICRC spokesperson, Graziella Leite Piccolo, said that ICRC had not been able to visit Camp Honor because the government had not met the organization's criteria for such site visits, including access to the entire facility and its detainees.
"It is important to note that, even if we had been able to visit, a visit alone is not a certificate of validation, but part of a process," she said. Government sources told Human Rights Watch that authorities have prevented the Human Rights Ministry from conducting any prison inspections at Camp Honor for more than a year.
Several government sources said that although the 56th Brigade, and its sibling, the 54th Brigade, technically fall under Defense Ministry administration, the brigades' chain of command bypass the ministry. They do not report to the defense minister or army chief of staff, but instead to Maliki through the Office of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. Through this office, the prime minister also controls the Counter-Terrorism Service, which falls under no ministry and is not governed by any legislation. The Counter-Terrorism Service works closely with US Special Forces.
Military officers and officials from both the Defense and Interior ministries told Human Rights Watch that the 56th Brigade and the Counter-Terrorism Service routinely conduct operations, including mass arrests and detentions, without notifying the security ministries. A high-level Interior Ministry officer told Human Rights Watch on December 18 that these units "create confusion and a dangerous atmosphere where special units who have a separate authority storm in and take people." The official said that regular security forces were afraid of these elite forces.
Another official, from the Defense Ministry, told Human Rights Watch on January 23 that contrary to the usual practice, in which security forces process detainees through the main prison system, the 56th and 54th Brigades often refuse to give up their prisoners.
"Their families and lawyers cannot visit them," he said, "and sometimes cannot even find out if they are dead or alive."
Defense Ministry officials interviewed by Human Rights Watch said there is close cooperation between the 56th and 54th Brigades, commonly referred to by military and police as "Maliki's forces." Prisoners arrested and initially held in the prison run by one brigade are often transferred to the prison run by the other.
An Interior Ministry official told Human Rights Watch on January 13 that "people come to police stations or prisons looking for their family members who have been arrested. If we find out they were taken by Maliki's forces, we don't get any information about them or have jurisdiction to do anything."
Last year, the Human Rights Ministry uncovered a secret prison run by the 54th Brigade, with the assistance of the 56th Brigade, in the old Muthanna airport in Western Baghdad. In April, Human Rights Watch interviewed 42 detainees who had been tortured at this facility over a period of months. The secret prison held about 430 detainees who had no access to their families or lawyers.
The prisoners said security forces personnel kicked, whipped, and beat them, asphyxiated them, gave them electric shocks, burned them with cigarettes, and pulled out their fingernails and teeth. They said that interrogators sodomized some detainees with sticks and pistol barrels. Some young men said they had been forced to perform oral sex on interrogators and guards, and that interrogators forced detainees to molest one another sexually.
A US Embassy cable viewed by the Los Angeles Times stated that 56th Brigade interrogators had been sent to Muthanna from Camp Honor. A separate cable said the brigade "reports directly to the prime minister's office."
At the time, Maliki described the prison at Muthanna as a transit site under the control of the Defense Ministry.
However, a high-ranking Defense Ministry official distanced his ministry from the allegations of torture at Muthanna. In a classified letter to the Human Rights Ministry dated May 3, 2010, and seen by Human Rights Watch, Saleh Sarhan, general secretary to the defense minister, wrote: "Our ministry has no relationship with those military investigation committees nor to the Sur Ninewa [Muthanna] Detention Center, because both are attached to the Office of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces."
If this information were about any other country in the Middle East, we would say, “Well, that’s the way it is in that part of the world. The Arabs just torture people they have in their custody.”
But this is not just any Middle East power. This is Iraq – a country the U.S. invaded to end a brutal tyranny and allow Democracy to flower.
If the information published by Human Rights Watch is correct, the task will take a lot more Miracle-Gro.
Thursday, February 03, 2011
Egypt Through the Rear-View Mirror
By William Fisher
One of the rituals associated with being a staffer for the President of the United States or a Cabinet officer is briefing your boss to be prepared to answer any question the press is likely to be asking.
Lots of smart people participate in these briefings. And if some upstart reporter asks a question no one anticipated, staffers have egg on their faces, big-time.
That’s what occurred to me as I listened to our top government officials, from the President on down, delivering their shaky, unconvincing and intentionally neutral responses to the most powerful calls for political change in Egypt’s history.
It was as if the notion of change had been invented yesterday and came as a complete surprise to the White House.
This in itself is pretty weird in a government that expends endless energy developing contingency plans for every eventuality imaginable to thinking people.
But evidently there was no “Plan B” for the Democracy Contingency. Judging by the Administration’s anemic responses, the possibility that demands for freedom of speech and assembly, a free press, and economic opportunity would ever develop to a point where they would have to be seriously addressed never occurred to our leaders.
I find this astonishing. It is not as if the dictatorial and cruel policies and practices of Hosni Mubarak’s security apparatus were new or unknown to official Washington. They have been a big part of the Egyptian political landscape for thirty years!
Occasionally, our government has even been obliged to respond publicly to some particularly egregious transgression of somebody’s human rights in the Land of the Pharaohs.
So it was in 2007, when Mubarak’s justice system sentenced a 22-year-old blogger to four years in prison. The blogger was a former college student, Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman.
Suleiman had been expelled from Al-Azhar University, Egypt's most powerful theological institution. His crime? Writing about the university's curriculum, Egypt's discrimination against minority religions, and religious extremism. He was charged with "spreading information disruptive of public order," with "incitement to hate Muslims" and "insulting the president."
The widely respected Reporters Without Borders called the sentence “a disgrace” and noted that it had come “almost three years ago to the day, [when] President Mubarak promised to abolish prison sentences for press offenses.”
That’s when I wrote the article below for Truthout. That article concluded:
“And where is George W. Bush on this issue? Just gullible, and allowing
himself to be snookered by the empty promises of one of the Middle East's
least-moderate autocrats? Or making it obvious to all that the Bush
administration values Egypt far more as an ally in its Global War on Terror than as a partner in its Global War for Democracy.”
Today, four years later, the initial reaction of the Obama Administration was like déjà vu all over again. Except that a lot more bloggers have been imprisoned since then.
This is what I wrote in 2007:
William Fisher | Let's Hear It for the Moderates
By William Fisher
Thursday 01 March 2007
The Bush administration is fond of labeling Middle East governments with
which it has friendly relations as "moderate Arab states." Egypt is perhaps the most prominent of these "moderates" - so moderate that it is, after Israel, the second-largest recipient of US development assistance and vast amounts of military accoutrements.
But can anyone find anything "moderate" about throwing a blogger in jail for four years?
The blogger is a former college student, Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman, 22,
who was expelled from Al-Azhar University - Egypt's most powerful theological institution - last spring. His crimes? He spoke out about the university's curriculum, Egypt's discrimination against minority religions, and religious extremism.
He was charged with "spreading information disruptive of public order," with "incitement to hate Muslims" and "insulting the president." He has not had consistent access to lawyers or to his family.
The widely respected Reporters Without Borders correctly pointed out, "This sentence is a disgrace. Almost three years ago to the day, President Mubarak promised to abolish prison sentences for press offenses. Suleiman's conviction and sentence is a message of intimidation to the rest of the Egyptian blogosphere, which had emerged in recent years as an effective bulwark against the regime's authoritarian excesses."
Only a couple of years ago, President Mubarak convinced George W. Bush that Egypt would be a strong ally in Bush's messianic mission of spreading democracy throughout the world. To people who know anything at all about world politics, Bush's judgment was about as reliable as his look into Vladimir Putin's heart, immediately followed by his assessment of the Russian president as a good man America could work with.
Because Egypt potentially plays a large role in furthering an Israeli-Palestinian agreement, the Bush administration has turned a blind eye to the rapid backward course Mubarak has pursued ever since he vowed to be Bush's buddy in spreading democracy in the Middle East.
True, Secretary of State Condi Rice did a lot of tut-tutting when Mubarak jailed the leader of his main opposition party, and she even postponed a visit to Cairo.
But, since then, it's been business as usual, with the Bush administration
continuing to describe this wonderful country, and its aging authoritarian
leader, as "moderate."
So what has happened to all the promises Mubarak made to our president? The aging autocrat took his first "significant" step toward democracy by introducing an amendment to the country's constitution. That measure, hailed by the Bush administration, purported to allow multiple candidates to run against him for the presidency for the first time.
Then came the fine print. The amendment placed severe restrictions on, for example, political parties that would be recognized as "legal" by the government. That eliminated a lot of the opposition.
Then the government proceeded with what almost everyone agrees were trumped-up charges against Ayman Nour, head of the leading opposition party. Mr. Nour is now in jail for forging signatures on his party's registration documents, even though his principal accuser has recanted this claim, which he now says was obtained under police duress.
Then came Egypt's parliamentary election, which Washington characterized as another important step on the road to democracy. That election was marked by widespread violence and voter disenfranchisement. Many people were killed and many more injured during the month-long election, and police cordoned off many polling stations to prevent people from voting.
Just to remind you, the violence flared after Egypt's Islamic movement, the
Muslim Brotherhood, won 88 seats, compared to the 15 it had held in the outgoing 454-member parliament. This happened despite the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood is banned from participating in elections, and its candidates are obliged to run as "independents."
Egyptian authorities say the security measures were taken to enable Egyptians to vote in an orderly manner. Right! The police brutality had nothing to do with trying to prevent the Brotherhood from making even larger gains.
"The elections, with their negative and positive aspects, will be a matter
of intensive study by all parties to derive lessons to develop future party and
democratic actions," Mubarak's spokesman, Suleiman Awwad, quoted the president as telling the lawmakers.
"Negative aspects should be answered strongly so that they will not be repeated."
Study by whom? Mubarak's National Democratic Party? The state-controlled media? Not likely. The United States? The United Nations? When pigs fly!
As always, the deconstruction of this election fell to local and international NGOs who monitor bad governance and abuses of human rights. Lamentably, their reports attracted little press attention anywhere.
And those in Egypt who wrote reports did so at great risk. The reason is
that NGOs there are strangled by a law severely restricting their activities,
and by the "extra-legal role" of the country's Security Services. As noted in a
report by Human Rights Watch, "Civil society groups in Egypt face severe
restrictions under the law governing nongovernmental organizations. In addition, the country's security services scrutinize and harass civil society activists even though the law does not accord them any such powers."
The HRW report documents numerous cases where the security services rejected NGO registrations, decided who could serve on NGO boards of directors, harassed NGO activists, and interfered with donations reaching the groups.
In today's Egypt, the Security Services make their own laws. For more than
20 years, the country has been kept under a "state of emergency," with draconian laws giving sweeping powers to Mubarak's security apparatus. More recently, their activities have been trumpeted as a key part of the "global war on terror."
I am all too familiar with the unbridled power of Egypt's security services.
I was living in Cairo during the multiple trials of Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an
Egyptian democracy activist. Dr. Ibrahim, then a professor of sociology at the American University in Cairo, headed a research and advocacy institute in Cairo that monitored elections, conducted voter education projects, and at times criticized the Egyptian government.
In the summer of 2000, he and 27 of his colleagues were arrested and tried.
All 28 defendants were found guilty and several were sent to jail. Ibrahim was sentenced to a seven-year term.
To America's great credit, the Clinton administration put extreme pressure
on the Egyptian authorities - even threatening to reduce US aid. Ibrahim's
conviction was finally overturned by the Egyptian Supreme Court, and he was ultimately acquitted of all charges in a second trial and released in 2003.
As forcefully underlined by Raja M. Kamal and Tom G. Palmer in a Washington Post op-ed article, "Egypt is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees the 'freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media' ... The posting of opinions on a student's personal blog hardly qualifies as a threat to national security, to the reputation of the president or to public order."
And where is George W. Bush on this issue? Just gullible, and allowing himself to be snookered by the empty promises of one of the Middle East's least-moderate autocrats? Or making it obvious to all that the Bush administration values Egypt far more as an ally in its Global War on Terror than as a partner in its Global War for Democracy.
One of the rituals associated with being a staffer for the President of the United States or a Cabinet officer is briefing your boss to be prepared to answer any question the press is likely to be asking.
Lots of smart people participate in these briefings. And if some upstart reporter asks a question no one anticipated, staffers have egg on their faces, big-time.
That’s what occurred to me as I listened to our top government officials, from the President on down, delivering their shaky, unconvincing and intentionally neutral responses to the most powerful calls for political change in Egypt’s history.
It was as if the notion of change had been invented yesterday and came as a complete surprise to the White House.
This in itself is pretty weird in a government that expends endless energy developing contingency plans for every eventuality imaginable to thinking people.
But evidently there was no “Plan B” for the Democracy Contingency. Judging by the Administration’s anemic responses, the possibility that demands for freedom of speech and assembly, a free press, and economic opportunity would ever develop to a point where they would have to be seriously addressed never occurred to our leaders.
I find this astonishing. It is not as if the dictatorial and cruel policies and practices of Hosni Mubarak’s security apparatus were new or unknown to official Washington. They have been a big part of the Egyptian political landscape for thirty years!
Occasionally, our government has even been obliged to respond publicly to some particularly egregious transgression of somebody’s human rights in the Land of the Pharaohs.
So it was in 2007, when Mubarak’s justice system sentenced a 22-year-old blogger to four years in prison. The blogger was a former college student, Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman.
Suleiman had been expelled from Al-Azhar University, Egypt's most powerful theological institution. His crime? Writing about the university's curriculum, Egypt's discrimination against minority religions, and religious extremism. He was charged with "spreading information disruptive of public order," with "incitement to hate Muslims" and "insulting the president."
The widely respected Reporters Without Borders called the sentence “a disgrace” and noted that it had come “almost three years ago to the day, [when] President Mubarak promised to abolish prison sentences for press offenses.”
That’s when I wrote the article below for Truthout. That article concluded:
“And where is George W. Bush on this issue? Just gullible, and allowing
himself to be snookered by the empty promises of one of the Middle East's
least-moderate autocrats? Or making it obvious to all that the Bush
administration values Egypt far more as an ally in its Global War on Terror than as a partner in its Global War for Democracy.”
Today, four years later, the initial reaction of the Obama Administration was like déjà vu all over again. Except that a lot more bloggers have been imprisoned since then.
This is what I wrote in 2007:
William Fisher | Let's Hear It for the Moderates
By William Fisher
Thursday 01 March 2007
The Bush administration is fond of labeling Middle East governments with
which it has friendly relations as "moderate Arab states." Egypt is perhaps the most prominent of these "moderates" - so moderate that it is, after Israel, the second-largest recipient of US development assistance and vast amounts of military accoutrements.
But can anyone find anything "moderate" about throwing a blogger in jail for four years?
The blogger is a former college student, Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman, 22,
who was expelled from Al-Azhar University - Egypt's most powerful theological institution - last spring. His crimes? He spoke out about the university's curriculum, Egypt's discrimination against minority religions, and religious extremism.
He was charged with "spreading information disruptive of public order," with "incitement to hate Muslims" and "insulting the president." He has not had consistent access to lawyers or to his family.
The widely respected Reporters Without Borders correctly pointed out, "This sentence is a disgrace. Almost three years ago to the day, President Mubarak promised to abolish prison sentences for press offenses. Suleiman's conviction and sentence is a message of intimidation to the rest of the Egyptian blogosphere, which had emerged in recent years as an effective bulwark against the regime's authoritarian excesses."
Only a couple of years ago, President Mubarak convinced George W. Bush that Egypt would be a strong ally in Bush's messianic mission of spreading democracy throughout the world. To people who know anything at all about world politics, Bush's judgment was about as reliable as his look into Vladimir Putin's heart, immediately followed by his assessment of the Russian president as a good man America could work with.
Because Egypt potentially plays a large role in furthering an Israeli-Palestinian agreement, the Bush administration has turned a blind eye to the rapid backward course Mubarak has pursued ever since he vowed to be Bush's buddy in spreading democracy in the Middle East.
True, Secretary of State Condi Rice did a lot of tut-tutting when Mubarak jailed the leader of his main opposition party, and she even postponed a visit to Cairo.
But, since then, it's been business as usual, with the Bush administration
continuing to describe this wonderful country, and its aging authoritarian
leader, as "moderate."
So what has happened to all the promises Mubarak made to our president? The aging autocrat took his first "significant" step toward democracy by introducing an amendment to the country's constitution. That measure, hailed by the Bush administration, purported to allow multiple candidates to run against him for the presidency for the first time.
Then came the fine print. The amendment placed severe restrictions on, for example, political parties that would be recognized as "legal" by the government. That eliminated a lot of the opposition.
Then the government proceeded with what almost everyone agrees were trumped-up charges against Ayman Nour, head of the leading opposition party. Mr. Nour is now in jail for forging signatures on his party's registration documents, even though his principal accuser has recanted this claim, which he now says was obtained under police duress.
Then came Egypt's parliamentary election, which Washington characterized as another important step on the road to democracy. That election was marked by widespread violence and voter disenfranchisement. Many people were killed and many more injured during the month-long election, and police cordoned off many polling stations to prevent people from voting.
Just to remind you, the violence flared after Egypt's Islamic movement, the
Muslim Brotherhood, won 88 seats, compared to the 15 it had held in the outgoing 454-member parliament. This happened despite the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood is banned from participating in elections, and its candidates are obliged to run as "independents."
Egyptian authorities say the security measures were taken to enable Egyptians to vote in an orderly manner. Right! The police brutality had nothing to do with trying to prevent the Brotherhood from making even larger gains.
"The elections, with their negative and positive aspects, will be a matter
of intensive study by all parties to derive lessons to develop future party and
democratic actions," Mubarak's spokesman, Suleiman Awwad, quoted the president as telling the lawmakers.
"Negative aspects should be answered strongly so that they will not be repeated."
Study by whom? Mubarak's National Democratic Party? The state-controlled media? Not likely. The United States? The United Nations? When pigs fly!
As always, the deconstruction of this election fell to local and international NGOs who monitor bad governance and abuses of human rights. Lamentably, their reports attracted little press attention anywhere.
And those in Egypt who wrote reports did so at great risk. The reason is
that NGOs there are strangled by a law severely restricting their activities,
and by the "extra-legal role" of the country's Security Services. As noted in a
report by Human Rights Watch, "Civil society groups in Egypt face severe
restrictions under the law governing nongovernmental organizations. In addition, the country's security services scrutinize and harass civil society activists even though the law does not accord them any such powers."
The HRW report documents numerous cases where the security services rejected NGO registrations, decided who could serve on NGO boards of directors, harassed NGO activists, and interfered with donations reaching the groups.
In today's Egypt, the Security Services make their own laws. For more than
20 years, the country has been kept under a "state of emergency," with draconian laws giving sweeping powers to Mubarak's security apparatus. More recently, their activities have been trumpeted as a key part of the "global war on terror."
I am all too familiar with the unbridled power of Egypt's security services.
I was living in Cairo during the multiple trials of Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an
Egyptian democracy activist. Dr. Ibrahim, then a professor of sociology at the American University in Cairo, headed a research and advocacy institute in Cairo that monitored elections, conducted voter education projects, and at times criticized the Egyptian government.
In the summer of 2000, he and 27 of his colleagues were arrested and tried.
All 28 defendants were found guilty and several were sent to jail. Ibrahim was sentenced to a seven-year term.
To America's great credit, the Clinton administration put extreme pressure
on the Egyptian authorities - even threatening to reduce US aid. Ibrahim's
conviction was finally overturned by the Egyptian Supreme Court, and he was ultimately acquitted of all charges in a second trial and released in 2003.
As forcefully underlined by Raja M. Kamal and Tom G. Palmer in a Washington Post op-ed article, "Egypt is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees the 'freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media' ... The posting of opinions on a student's personal blog hardly qualifies as a threat to national security, to the reputation of the president or to public order."
And where is George W. Bush on this issue? Just gullible, and allowing himself to be snookered by the empty promises of one of the Middle East's least-moderate autocrats? Or making it obvious to all that the Bush administration values Egypt far more as an ally in its Global War on Terror than as a partner in its Global War for Democracy.
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