3 thoughts on “Egypt”

  1. Knock on wood. Keep your fingers crossed. Etc.

    Problem is with Suleiman taking total control of the gov’t — will have to see where the military actually comes down…and on WHOM.

    They’ve been doing their own torturing, btw, as reported in The Guardian. Were these rogue units? Were they acting on orders to try to intimidate the protesters with a final round of beatings and electric shocks? Who knows.

    Bahgat 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 organisations 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.

  2. More on Suleiman’s intel and torture/rendition activities on The Leonard Lopate Show’s backstory feature. Guest is Lisa Hajjar, associate professor a thet University of California at Santa Barbara. Audio only, no transcript.

    I had not known Sileiman flew to Libya where a US rendered detainee ended up, the guy whose torture forced “confession” of knowing Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda were working together — one of the pieces of intel Colin Powell used which was patently false. The prisoner was quite well when he spoke to human rights activists prior to Suleiman’s arrival, but by the time Suleiman flew back to Egypt the prisoner had “hung himself,” was found dead in his cell.

  3. it’s only good if the military is later willing to be under civilian control and will lift the state of emergency. i’m not sure that they ever will, which essentially makes this a step sideways. rule by mubarak under a state of emergency that suspended civil liberties is not different from rule by field marshall tantawi under that same state of emergency.

    on the other hand, mubarak had to go and you can’t have elections instantaneously. so at least this is a step forward in that sense.

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