Egypt

Demand for truth in Giulo Regini case sparks protests

As the father of Italian student Giulio Regeni, murdered while researching trade unions in Egypt, said: "Giulio was a citizen of the world, and he didn't only live to study, he enjoyed himself. And here they are, the generation without limits and without borders, those for whom every place in this world is a kind of home, ready to demand the truth for Giulio". Two months after his murder, Italy this week awaits the arrival of the most senior Egyptian investigators who , it is claimed, will consign an exhaustively researched dossier on the death of Regeni into the hands of Rome's leading public...

Whitewash on Regeni

At the end of February, a month after the disappearance in Cairo of Italian researcher Giulio Regeni, the official Egyptian investigation into his torture and death has reported. The murder, so the Minister of the Interior claimed, was “most likely” due to a “personal vendetta”, in a context of “young Arab/ foreign contacts” where drugs freely circulated. This cynical nonsense was of a piece with the same minister’s claim, when Regeni’s body was first found, that death was “most likely” due to the victim being struck by a car. The autopsy in Italy revealed no evidence of any drugs, but that...

Giulio Regeni: murdered by Sisi’s cops

On 25 January, during celebrations in Cairo of the fifth anniversary of the rising against the Mubarak dictatorship in 2011, Giulio Regeni disappeared. He had been seized by the thugs of the secret services of the Al Sisi government. On 4 February, his tortured and broken body was found in a ditch outside Cairo. Giulio Regeni, aged 28, was a doctoral student from Cambridge University, a socialist militant, and a freelance writer for the Italian left-wing paper Il Manifesto, for which he wrote extensively on the Egyptian trade union and labour movement. His last article, “In Egypt, second life...

The killings in Sinai, Beirut, and Paris

On 31 October, the Islamist group Daesh claimed the destruction of a Russian passenger aircraft flight 7K9268, over Sinai, Egypt, on 31 October, killing 224 people. On 12 November it claimed 43 civilians killed by bombings in Beirut. And now it has claimed 129 people killed in Paris on the evening of 13 November. In Paris, gunmen opened fire in many crowded cafes, dance halls, and stadiums. The latest count is 352 injured, 99 critically. The suspected ringleader, a Belgian national, has been killed in a police raid. Daesh conquered Iraq’s second city, Mosul, in June 2014, and since then has...

How Egypt's workers were defeated

On 25 January 2011, an 18 day struggle began that toppled one of the Arab world’s longest-serving dictators, Hosni Mubarak, President of Egypt. Eighteen months later, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, the founding party of political Islam, was elected president. After barely a year he was deposed by a military coup and the old order was restored under Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. In the space of four years, Egypt has traversed from Mubarak’s military Bonapartism through the so-called “Republic of Tahrir” to the current “Republic of Fear”. The revival of workers’ struggle in Egypt a decade ago...

Death sentences for political crimes

An Egyptian court has sentenced 188 people to death by hanging for their alleged involvement in a riot which killed 14 policemen. This is the most recent of a series of mass death sentences for political crimes. Over a thousand Egyptians charged with offences related to political unrest have been condemned to death this year alone. The military government is tightening its strangle hold on political life, absolving its allies and crushing its opponents in the process. The court’s decision came just days after the former dictator Hosni Mubarak and seven of his security chiefs were cleared of...

Ahmed Seif el-Islam

On Wednesday, 27 August Egypt’s leading human rights lawyer, Ahmed Seif el-Islam died aged 63 after several days in a coma after heart surgery. As he lay dying, two of his children were behind bars for their political activism. Seif el-Islam represented people of many backgrounds in Egypt’s repressive legal system. A co-founder of the Hisham Mubarak Law Centre (dedicated to defending human rights cases), in 2001 he assisted in the defence of 52 men on trial for “performing immoral acts” in the ‘Queen Boat Trial’ and three years later he represented 15 men allegedly tortured while in detention...

Support Al-Jazeera journalists!

An Egyptian court which jailed three journalists for “spreading false news” has issued a statement explaining its decision. Mohamed Fadel Fahmy, Baher Mohamed and Peter Geste, who work for the Al-Jazeera news network, were given jail sentences of seven to ten years after reporting on the brutal repression of Muslim Brotherhood supporters following the military coup of 2013. The court said that the journalists had “falsified the truth” and that “the devil guided them to use journalism and direct it towards activities against this nation.” The military regime in Egypt believes that Al Jazeera...

El-Sisi win strengthens counter-revolution in Egypt

Abdel Fatah El-Sisi has won the Egyptian presidential elections and will become the next head of state. El-Sisi, the senior general in the Egyptian armed forces and former Defence Secretary, won over 90% of the vote in an election involved mass intimidation by police and crack-downs on opposition activists and protesters. The election was the first to take place since the military coup against the Muslim Brotherhood government in July 2013. Abdel Fatah El-Sisi was the leading commander of the Egyptian army when it deposed former president Mohamed Morsi. Much of the military and state...

683 sentenced to death in Egypt

On Monday 28 April, 683 people were sentenced to death in the city of Minya, Egypt. The same judge then upheld the death sentences of 37 others, with life sentences for 491 more. Amnesty International say "This is the largest single batch of simultaneous death sentences we’ve seen in recent years, not just in Egypt but anywhere in the world.” Most of those sentenced are supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, including the head of the organisation, Mohammed Badie. They were accused of killing two police officers last year, during violence following the military coup against the Muslim...

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