30 held in detention following Friday demonstrations

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30 held in detention following Friday demonstrations

Post by DJKeefy »

30 protesters held in detention following Friday demonstration against land transfer.

Following Friday’s demonstrations contesting the recent maritime border agreement signed between President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi and Saudi King Salman bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud, dozens of arrested protesters, including several minors, are still in custody.

Protesters chanted that Tiran and Sanafir islands belong to Egypt, rejecting their sovereign transfer to Saudi Arabia in the signed agreement.

In Alexandria, the Motazah police station continues to detain nine persons. According to Mohamed Awaad, a lawyer at the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights (ECESR), the group was divided into two. The first group includes five protesters, among them a minor under the age of 15.

The prosecution ordered the detention of the four adults for 15 days pending investigations, while the minor will be detained for a week in a juvenile facility. The prosecution has charged the protesters with affiliation to a “banned” organisation, infringement of the Protest Law, obstruction of roads, and “thuggery” (a statute in the Egyptian penal code).

The second group which faces the same charges also includes a 14-year-old detainee, along with three others. The prosecution’s decision on their situation is yet to be known, according to Awaad, who complained about the lack of transparency by prosecution officials on the situation of detainees.

Moreover, on Saturday human rights’ lawyers denounced a decision issued by Qasr Al-Nil prosecution authorities cancelling the release of detained protesters only hours after it ordered their release.

“We have addressed the prosecutor-general and the head of the Supreme Judicial Council regarding the manipulation of the release order by the prosecution,” stated lawyer at ECESR Sameh Samir in a post to his official Twitter account Saturday night.

“We’ve come to see the day where prosecution decisions change, after several hours of their issuance and announcement. They have officially gone mad,” Samir added.

Central Cairo Prosecution Attorney General Wael Shebl decided Saturday to uphold the detention of 25 protesters for 24 hours, awaiting investigation results conducted by the National Security Apparatus regarding the charges they face.

According to the state-owned MENA news agency, the prosecution ordered the examination of the content of surveillance cameras in Downtown Cairo where the protests took place and the interrogation of the police officers who performed the arrests.

Central Cairo Prosecution has charged the detainees with breaching the Protest Law, obstructing traffic, and unlawful assembly.

Police arrested dozens of protesters in demonstrations across Egypt on Friday, driven by calls to contest the Egyptian-Saudi maritime borders agreement. However, protesters surpassed the organisers stated aims and chanted for the downfall of Sisi and his government.

In Cairo, citizens demonstrated in the Downtown distinct and nearby areas Talaat Harb street and Al-Sayeda Zeinab district. The largest demonstration took place at the Press Syndicate and surrounding streets of Champollion and Ramses. However, the majority of those detained were released on the same night.

The Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE) reported that 69 protesters were freed from Qasr Al-Nil police station, with the exception of the group still in custody.

Police released another nine protesters from a Dokki police station, 10 from Azbakeya and five from Al-Sayeda Zeinab police station, according to AFTE’s reports.

Some protesters stated police had stolen their belongings after they were arrested in front of the Press Syndicate, according to the AFTE report.

Police released other detainees in the governorates of Ismailia, Aswan, Luxor and Hurghada. According to the counts of ECESR on Friday night, 110 protesters were arrested across Egypt, including 15 female protesters.

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The demonstrations—estimated to have been comprised of between 2,000 and 3,000 protesters, according to eyewitnesses and reports—were the largest gathering of different political and social factions since the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood regime in 2013.

Certain factions have staged demonstrations over the past year, including significant movements by the press, doctors and lawyers syndicates. Protesters at each of these rallies condemned security force’s brutality and the state’s crackdown on freedoms.

Moreover, various social groups demonstrated against the government, including a large protest held by state employees against the Civil Service in August 2015.

The Protest Law was issued under former interim president Adly Mansour in November 2013, as a deterrent measure to pro-Muslim Brotherhood demonstrations that erupted in the months following the ouster of former president Mohamed Morsi on 3 July 2013.

However, human rights defenders have criticised the law as an oppressive tool used to jail activists and political dissidents. Rights’ groups had demanded its revocation but none of the lawyers’ attempts to argue for the unconstitutionality of the law have been successful.

Source: http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2016/04/1 ... -transfer/


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Re: 30 held in detention following Friday demonstrations

Post by Hafiz »

This is a surprisingly honest press report.

Reuters and others (Too lazy to quote but easy to find) report that there are 40,000 political prisoners in Egypt under the Sisi regime which puts Egypt on all the bad human rights lists and raises questions about whether he can survive for any length of time.

New GDP figures and new projections for 2017 mean that there will be many extra hungry mouths, including bolshi middle class mouths, complaining in the year ahead. For Sisi I hope the army is prepared to fire on Egyptian protests.
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Re: 30 held in detention following Friday demonstrations

Post by newcastle »

It's generally assumed that the army wouldn't fire on the public.

Im not sure the police and other arms of the security aparatus would have the same restraint. It seems to me that, together with the control of the media, Sisi still has a firm grip.

Of course a spark can ignite the situation, and can come out of the blue.

I see a tea vendor in New Cairo was shot dead by a policeman today, presumably after some altercation over payment. Even got onto the BBC news this evening. The policeman has been arrested. There have been other similar incidents reported over the years.

I read somewhere that the apparent reluctance of the regime to tackle the persistent problem of police misdemeanours may lie in its dependence on them for its own survival.
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Re: 30 held in detention following Friday demonstrations

Post by Hafiz »

Police 'misdemeanors.' Really!

The touchpaper for the 2011 'revolution' was, arguably, the killing, by the police, of an Alexandrian student suspected of drug crimes. The commentaries at the time were that this event unleashed a public display of near universal loathing of the police based on their excesses committed personally or to known others.

Protest against the police has been around since 2011 and probably long before. The 'bread, freedom and justice chants of the later demonstrators were aimed at the police who judiciously 'absented' themselves at the time and only 'reappeared' with Sisi (another and untold story). GD will have better information but I think she will agree with me that their violence and arbitrariness was, and continues to be, a first order grievance for average Egyptians.

The Sisi government appears to have done little to reform them to the peril of its government and, as a result, for all intents and purposes Egypt is remains a police state.

Newcastle: as regards who will fire, we already know the answer to this and the estimates of the dead in one event range from 700 to 1000. After 70 years of military government the least thing Egypt lacks are instruments of domination and extermination.
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Re: 30 held in detention following Friday demonstrations

Post by newcastle »

You will know that a member of this forum was banned from entering Egypt for making injudicious remarks concerning the security authorities on a FB forum.

As far as I know it was not the army involved in the Raba'a and other incidents

Enough said.

I don't know if GD agrees with your appraisal. Let's see if she comments.
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Re: 30 held in detention following Friday demonstrations

Post by newcastle »

I thought this was a very perceptive opinion article by Wael Eskandar.

http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2016/04/2 ... me-corner/

It concludes :

"President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi has little choice but to continue his existential fight for power. He has already hedged his bets on his brutal police generals, along with some of the most disreputably corrupt officials, to run the government. How could Egypt’s generals deal with mounting dissatisfaction with the economy, the island transfers, and the mounting pressure from abroad to hold Regini’s murderers accountable?

The political arena in Egypt is in disarray, with an absence of balance in power merely camouflaged by the security apparatus’ iron grip. Egypt, and in particular its ruling class, must come to terms with that fact that some concessions must be made locally in order to achieve some stability. This would mean rolling back some of the hazardous policies enacted by Al-Sisi when he had free reign. Yet, the question remains, are those in power willing to concede to this reality, or will Egypt continue on its crash course?"
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Re: 30 held in detention following Friday demonstrations

Post by Hafiz »

No I didn't know. Is this fact or rumor. If fact how would the authorities have been able to obtain the identity of a poster?
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Re: 30 held in detention following Friday demonstrations

Post by Major Thom »

Goodness I hope their are not going to be further violence on our streets I think we have seen too much in the past years. I would hate to think that there may be more ahead of us.
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Re: 30 held in detention following Friday demonstrations

Post by newcastle »

@Hafiz

It is fact and the individual made no effort to disguise their identity. Not that false names are much of a problem in the real world.

Whether the security forces monitor this, or any other site, is debatable.

They didn't need to in the case in question as details of compromising posts were copied and supplied to the authorities. This much has already been admitted to, with some pleasure, by the person who did it.

It is a cautionary tale for anyone posting what might be taken as defamatory remarks.
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Re: 30 held in detention following Friday demonstrations

Post by Hafiz »

Thank you Newcastle.

My questions are as follows, and maybe there are others who can help:

Can the Egyptian Security Services access this site and extract/hack the actual identity and nationality of an individual poster?

(Not for you) What can be done to improve security on this site to protect it from security service hacking?

I am tech naive (cretinous) but I'm hoping that my previous rhetorical excesses won't mean that I won't get a tourist visa in the future, but I don't regret a syllable of my posts.

Should my future posts be ironical, paradoxical, absurdist or dadist to dodge the literal reading skills of the security service "reviewers" of this site? This is a rhetorical question and, therefore, hopefully, less likely to be understood by a non-native English security service speaker. Maybe.
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Re: 30 held in detention following Friday demonstrations

Post by newcastle »

I think it would be unwise to think they couldn't if they wanted to.

But considering the myriad forums heaping abuse on the regime, it would be a Herculean task to monitor them all. The case I mentioned ( which didn't relate to L4U) involved other factors and, as I said, the active participation of individuals with a personal axe to grind.

I don't think one needs to get paranoid about making fair comment...after all, you can read critical opinions in Al Ahram and elsewhere.

But there are specific offences of abusing the judiciary, police etc., insulting religion, or the president, and I've also seen several instances of foreigners, known to be vocal in their criticism of the regime, being denied entry to Egypt.
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Re: 30 held in detention following Friday demonstrations

Post by Hafiz »

Thank you Newcastle.

What do you mean by: "The case I mentioned ( which didn't relate to L4U)"?

I'm still hoping for some expert technical answers to my questions.
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