The government has partially met one of the hunger-strikers’ demands, while prison authorities continued cracking down, as other detainees joined the strike in a revolving door fashion.
Hours after the detainees started their strike on Sunday, Mohamed el-Sharqawi was referred to the forensic medical department, where he was examined and x-rayed. On Monday, he was provided [...]

May 31, 2006
The other day I got to experience one of the few perks of the job out here and attended a monthly lunch for journalists thrown by Baghdad division commander, Major General J.D. Thurman of the 4th Infantry Division.
I had to use his name in a story once and asked a subordinate what the [...]

Right now, the Brotherhood has other problems, with continuous arrests taking place and PM Nazif thinking that they should not be in parliament in first place.
But a while ago, I thought it was time to document what the Brotherhood thinks about how to regulate the Egyptian economy. After all, with 88 seats in the People’s [...]

The US-based rights watchdog has slammed the Egyptian government, in a statement today, over the torture of Mohamed el-Sharqawi and Karim el-Sha3er, calling for an independent judicial investigation into the incident, and asked Hosni Mubarak to “put a stop to repeated outrages by agents of the state.”
Egypt: Police Severely Beat Pro-Democracy Activists  One Activist Also [...]

Gamal Tag el-Din, Lawyers’ Syndicate council member, is holding tomorrow Wednesday 11am a press conference on the democracy detainees, at the syndicate’s conference hall.
Tag is a Muslim Brotherhood activist, who played a major role in publicizing the infamous “Blacklist of Judges,” that included the names of pro-government judges accused of rigging the vote during last [...]

The Prison authorities cracked down on the hunger-striking detainees in Tora, as the strike escalated, with 13 activists in total taking action on its second day.
The strike started on Saturday night/Sunday morning, with six detainees in Mahkoum Tora, refusing to eat. The prisoners, according to activist and legal sources, made it clear to the prison authorities the [...]

The Hisham Mubarak Law Center has called for a demonstration in front of Qasr el-Nil Police Station, (located in Garden City, downtown Cairo) on Thursday, 5pm, to protest the torture of Mohamed el-Sharqawi and Karim el-Sha3er, the two Youth for Change activists.
The announcement came during a press conference held by the Liberties’ Committee at the [...]

At the WEF in Sharm last week, Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif fed the national press with some projects to be announced soon, in tourism, real estate and transportation, which will mostly be financed by UAE or Kuwait based investment groups. I am under the impression that the government over the past months has focused its [...]

Mohamed el-Sharqawi has sent a testimony on his arrest and torture, from Tora Prison.
Here’s the English translation of it:
A Letter from Mohamed el-Sharqawi
Kidnapped on 25 May, Currently in Cell 8-1, Mahkoum Tora
How I was kidnapped, beaten and tortured for eight hours?
I went through many moments of fear and horror in my life, but nothing [...]

Statement by Detainees in Tora Prison
Released 27 May 2006

We, the detained in Tora Prison, charged of insulting the president and blocking the traffic, condemn police violence, the kidnap and torture of our colleagues Mohamed el-Sharkawy and Karim el-Sha’er, and condemn the complicity of the Regime Security Prosecution (formerly known as State Security Prosecution).
 

The regime has [...]

I was contacted by one of the detainees’ wife, who called me this afternoon to say the incarcerated activists will start a hunger strike as the clock strikes midnight today, demanding: a) the examination of Mohamed el-Sharqawi and Kareem al-Sha’er by the Forensics Medical Authorities, b) an investigation into the torture and abuse incidents the [...]

I should have a copy of Sharqawi’s full testimony later, but the AP is covering the story:
CAIRO, Egypt — Egyptian police allegedly tortured two protesters – sexually assaulting one of them – after a peaceful demonstration in support of pro-reform judges, a lawyer and an opposition group said Friday.
Activist Mohammed el-Sharkawi, 24, was sodomized “using [...]

Forget about Cairo’s Abdel Khaleq Tharwat St. where people are increasingly getting into the bad habbit of “disappearing.” Once again, Kefaya strikes in Seoul..
Socialist activists in South Korea held a demo in front of the Egyptian embassy in Seoul, supporting the Egyptian judges and denouncing the crackdown on pro-reform activists.
Last March, President Roh Moo-hyun of South [...]

Activists in Cairo are planning events this week in solidarity with the detainees, and to protest the sexual assault on Youth for Change activist Mohamed el-Sharqawi last Thursday, in Qasr el-Nil Police Station.

A press conference by the Liberties Committee (Lagnet el-Hurriyat) will be held at the Press Syndicate on Sunday, 5:30pm.

There will be also a [...]

Did Iran offer recognition of Israel according to the Beirut Declaration in 2003? Some top experts on Iran at no less an establishment institution as Johns Hopkins’ SAIS think so:
WASHINGTON, May 24 (IPS) – Iran offered in 2003 to accept peace with Israel and to cut off material assistance to Palestinian armed groups and pressure [...]

Here’s what happens when you get a (presumably) Arab-American journalist to do a story about something to do with Islam: a balanced, nuanced story that shows the full complexity of the question at hand for an audience not familiar with the topic. And it reads well and has a saucy lead.
Fatwas: Muslim religious edicts are [...]

So Egyptian media moguls the Adib brothers are talking to Robert de Niro on the sidelines of the Cannes Film Festival, where they are presenting the Yacoubian Building, about making a movie about Osama Bin Laden:
The pipeline movie about Osama bin Laden, head of the Al-Qaeda network and the world’s most wanted man, has also [...]

Hany Abu-Assad, director of Paradise Now, responds to the Angry Arab’s critique of his film:
I attempted to repaint the story no longer from the mythological point of view but from that of current reality. To kill yourself with your enemy is a Biblical story. The story of Samson already tells us that people prefer to [...]

It’s not the first time that Egyptian police rape people they arrest — it happened several times a few years ago when the security services were conducting a pogrom against homosexuals. But the sheer barbarity of using sticks to sodomize dissidents (a claim now verified by several rights activists) tells you a lot about the [...]

Sumita Pahwa, one of the organizers of the Washington, DC, 25 May demo, writes about the day:
Ustaz Ibrahim and I got there a bit early to set things up, and within a few minutes there were two police-type cars there, which read “United States Secret Service – Uniformed Division” and the cops asked us what [...]

Finally some good news for a change…..
Youth for Change activist, Ahmad Yasser el-Droubi, was released today. Droubi was among the first group of pro-judges activists to be arrested last April, and spent his prison time in Tora. The State Security prosecutor has decided to release him, based oh his medical conditions. Droubi is diabetic, and his health [...]

A recently published study by a Pakistani think-tank revealed there were at least 1,000 Al-Qaeda suspects picked up in Pakistan over the past four years.
The study, conducted by the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, based on monitoring media reports, disputed the official figure, of 660 detainees, given previously by the Pakistani government:
“Pakistani security agencies arrested [...]

The two Youth for Change activists, Mohamed el-Sharqawi and Karim el-Sha’er, arrested yesterday by plain clothes security, were brutally tortured and sexually abused, say their lawyers and fellow activists who managed to see the two last night at the State Security Prosecutor’s office.
Sharqawi was kidnapped, according to accounts by lawyers and activists as he was [...]

One of the big “disappointments,” if you can call it such, about yesterday’s 25 May demo in Cairo was that the Muslim Brotherhood was no-show. That meant that, aside from the 300 judges that stood silently in front of their Club to demand judicial independence, there were only a few hundred leftists activists in Central [...]

Some of them are very touching, and others are very funny. (Especially Josh’s quote about Abdel Kuddous.) Link.
“Tell your foreign friends to get away from here. That it’s not safe for them. That within the next 10 minutes I can’t gurantee their safety”
A plainclothed state-security agent to me
” They say they are not going anywhere. [...]

Where does he get the balls?
Rallies ‘evidence of democracy’
2006-05-23 09:12:47
Cairo – President Hosni Mubarak lashed out at coverage of Cairo street protests in which more than 600 Egyptians were beaten and arrested, calling the rallies “evidence of democracy” and coverage of them “libel and blasphemy”.
Mubarak said: “Continuation (of the protests) is evidence of [...]

I took the picture this protester is holding:

Protesters greeting the arrival of Judge Mahmoud Mekky.

A protester wearing a sash about Ayman Nour, but I can’t make out the first word.
These pics are from journalist Hossam el-Hamalawy. He has a slideshow here.

I just got this email from Hossam el-Hamalawy, who got pepper-sprayed on his face earlier today:
Hi,
 
State Security police arrested today at least two Youth for Change Activists, who’ve been recently released from Tora.
 
Mohamed Sharkawy was leaving the Press Syndicate after attending a demo in support of the judges, in a taxi, when he was stopped [...]

Got this by email, so sorry no link. (Update: here’s the link.)
Journalists face trial for denouncing Egypt vote-rigging
Wed May 24, 2:29 PM ET
Three Egyptian journalists and a lawyer were charged by a criminal court for denouncing state-sponsored fraud in last year’s parliamentary elections, judicial sources told AFP.
Wael al-Ibrashi and Hoda Abu Bakr, both journalists with [...]

It’s 36 degrees in Cairo but it feels hotter. Walking Downtown is a nasty, sticky business.
Midan Talat Harb was quiet around two. Fifteen big green trucks full of hot, unhappy Central Security boys—the foot odor alone should be enough to subdue a riot—and a block of seventy or so of them formed up in the [...]

I got these from some blog a while back, but don’t remember where exactly. In any case I thought this graphic and similar ones might be useful to protesters at tomorrow’s demos. Get them all here [ZIP, 3MB] in svg format, which makes it scalable to any size. Apologies to their creator, who should be [...]

Mark Glaser has an interesting article on the web activism around Alaa and the techniques used to attract attention to his cause:
So after Alaa’s detention on May 7, the reaction from the blogosphere and other activists around the globe was swift. They created a multi-faceted campaign to free him and bring attention to his plight [...]

Ethan Heitner — formerly deputy editor of Cairo magazine charged with disciplining this disorganized managing editor over getting things done on time — reminisces over the “Arab Spring” at post over at TomPaine.com. The recent decision to reopen the US embassy in Libya is discussed there as the “nail in the coffin” of the US’ [...]

This BusinessWeek article about Egypt and WEF is amusing:
While economic reforms are proceeding fairly smoothly, the political convoy seems to have hit a roadblock — a point underlined by recent police beatings in central Cairo of demonstrators demanding independence for the judiciary. Mubarak, who will mark a quarter century in power in October, will eventually [...]

Via Tomanbay:

AUC students will be joining in:
FOR AN INDEPENDENT JUDICIARY,
 FOR EGYPT,
 
Stand
 
On the Platform
 
Greek Campus, AUC
 
Thursday 25th May, 2006
 
@ 2:00 PM SHARP
 
(Wear Black)
 
Teach-in
Blue Room @ 1:00 PM
I would urge AUC students to join the protests on the street.

You can find a large-size picture and the story behind the demo here.

Another city:
Cairo – London – Paris – Athens – the Hague – Seol – Washington – New York – Chicago – Toronto – Montreal – Beirut
and now….
San Francisco
Hands Off our Judges!!
Release our Detainees!!
Democracy & Justice now!!!
The demo will be in front of the Egyptian Consulate
For more information please contact Sherry Wolf at: sherrywolf2000@yahoo.com