Category Archives: Egypt

‘I will never give up’: Egypt’s exiles still dream of democracy

Posted on by

Those who rose up against dictatorship believe their example will inspire another generation

Ten years ago they were overthrowing Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak. Now they are in exile in Britain, under threat of imprisonment by the military regime. For Cairo’s revolutionaries, it has been a long journey of high hopes and broken dreams.

“I was part of a historical moment,” says Sayed, 39. He was working in the Middle East in December 2010 when Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor in Tunisia, set himself on fire in a protest against his treatment by local officials. Fuelled by social media coverage, the incident sparked protests around the region, including in Egypt, where crowds flocked to Tahrir Square in Cairo demanding the overthrow of Mubarak.

Continue reading...

Witness claims seeing Giulio Regeni in Cairo police station before death

Posted on by

Man also alleges hearing Egyptian security officials discuss tampering with Italian student’s mobile phone

A man who claims to have witnessed the arrest of Giulio Regeni has told the Guardian how he heard and saw the Cambridge PhD student inside a police station in Cairo before he was found dead by a roadside.

The witness, who is regarded as credible by investigators in Rome, said the security officials alleged to have detained the Italian behaved as if they were above the law. “Those people that took Giulio were different,” he said. “Everyone is afraid of [Egypt’s] National Security Agency.”

Continue reading...

Egypt’s political prisoners ‘denied healthcare and subject to reprisals’

Posted on by

International community must put pressure on Egypt to prevent prison deaths, warns Amnesty International

A decade after the uprising that overturned politics in Egypt, political prisoners are being targeted inside the country’s overcrowded prison system.

Egypt’s prisons hold at least twice the number of people they were built for, with prisoners of conscience targeted by security forces and denied healthcare, according to Amnesty International. Prisoners of all kinds risk dying in custody because of the profound lack of basic care by the authorities, said the human rights organisation.

Continue reading...

How the Arab spring engulfed the Middle East – and changed the world

Posted on by

An era of uprisings, nascent democracy and civil war in the Arab world started with protests in a small Tunisian city. The unrest grew to engulf the Middle East, shake authoritarian governments and unleash consequences that still shape the world a decade later

A decade ago this month, protests forced Tunisia’s authoritarian president, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, to flee his country. It was a quick and relatively peaceful revolution, coming after decades of stagnant but entrenched regimes across the Arab world.

Few at the time understood the power of the images of unrest being broadcast online and into homes across the Middle East. Within weeks, other significant protest movements would emerge, and by the middle of 2011, leaders in Cairo, Tripoli, Sana’a, Damascus and elsewhere were under serious pressure or had been swept away by a tidal wave of peaceful demonstrations and armed resistance.

Continue reading...

‘I’ll never forget that sound’: Egypt’s lost revolution

Posted on by

25 January 2011 marked the start of Hosni Mubarak’s fall but also moves by the military to take over

In the centre of the place where it all began, Mansour Mohammed manned a tarpaulin-covered stall on the only green grass among miles of concrete and asphalt. For 10 days he ate and slept huddled with strangers bound together by burgeoning rage and revolt all around. Enormous crowds heaved and surged – roaring their demands for change in a call that resounded through Tahrir Square in Cairo. “I’ll never forget that sound,” he said. “It was the most powerful noise I’ve ever heard. It was louder than 10 jumbo jets. It was the release of six decades of fear.”

A decade on, the launchpad of Egypt’s revolution – a seminal part of the uprisings which became known as the Arab spring – is a very different place, as is the country. The strip of grass has been concreted over and on it stands a newly erected obelisk, pointing skywards in a trenchant reminder of times of staid certainty. Traffic moves sedately around a roundabout now free of protesters or attempts at defiance. Secret police are positioned, not so secretly, nearby. There is little talk of revolution, and attempts to stir the ghosts of Tahrir Square are met with the heavy hand of the invigorated military state that entrenched itself in the revolution’s wake.

Continue reading...

50 ancient coffins uncovered at Egypt’s Saqqara necropolis

Posted on by

Wooden sarcophagi discovered at site south of Cairo along with funerary temple of Queen Naert

Egypt has announced the discovery of a new trove of treasures at the Saqqara necropolis south of Cairo, including an ancient funerary temple.

The tourism and antiquities ministry said the “major discoveries” made by a team of archaeologists headed by the Egyptologist Zahi Hawass also included more than 50 sarcophagi.

Continue reading...

Egypt denies ‘oxygen crisis’ as Covid-19 ward videos allege shortage

Posted on by

Amid rising infection rates, authorities suppress efforts to discuss levels of vital supplies, as relatives’ claims fuel concerns

Filming on his phone inside Egypt’s Hussainiya hospital, Ahmed Mamdouh pans around the ward to show beds occupied by motionless bodies. “All the people are dead,” he says. Mamdouh’s own relative had just died, for which he blames a lack of medical oxygen.

In another video, a screaming woman at Zeftah hospital in Gharbiyeh governorate demands nurses help resuscitate a relative. In a third, a man in Damanhour, in the Nile delta, gasps for air, glassy-eyed as he holds an oxygen mask in his hand. “There is a lack of oxygen,” he says, extending an invitation for local health minister to come and witness the problem. “Join us, minister.”

Continue reading...

Arab states agree to end three-year boycott of Qatar

Posted on by

Reconciliation with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and the UAE includes a non-aggression pact

A three-year boycott of Qatar by four other Middle Eastern countries that disfigured Gulf cooperation and raised concerns in the west about a strengthened regional role for Iran and Turkey has come to a stuttering close.

“The kingdom is happy to welcome you,” Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman said as he greeted Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, on the tarmac of the airport in Al-Ula, north of Medina, on Tuesday.

Continue reading...

Egypt drops inquiry into murder of Italian student Giulio Regeni

Posted on by

Prosecutors reject Italy’s finding that Egyptian security officials were behind kidnap and torture

Egypt’s public prosecution has officially closed its investigation into the murder of Giulio Regeni, rejecting Italian prosecutors’ findings that accused four Egyptian security officials of kidnapping and torturing the Italian doctoral student in 2016.

Italy officially indicted four Egyptian security officials including two from Egypt’s national security agency in early December. The four men were accused of kidnapping Regeni, whose body was found on an outlying Cairo highway in February 2016 showing signs of torture. One of the suspects, named as Magdi Ibrahim Abdel Al Sharif, is accused of grievous bodily harm.

Continue reading...

‘Vaccine diplomacy’ sees Egypt roll out Chinese coronavirus jab

Posted on by

A lack of trial data transparency from China has raised concerns, but the country is confidently pushing ahead

When Egypt’s health ministry sent out an invitation to doctors to be vaccinated against Covid-19, they neglected to make clear it was a clinical trial.

Instead, it assured them that two Covid-19 vaccines developed by China’s National Biotec Group, part of a state-owned conglomerate known as Sinopharm, had no side-effects and that “the minister of health was vaccinated today, and orders were issued to vaccinate all doctors and workers who wish to be vaccinated”.

Continue reading...

The Arab spring wasn’t in vain. Next time will be different | Nesrine Malik

Posted on by

Lessons have been learned about how to convert the forces that demand equality into those that deliver it

At the end of 2010, I was en route to Sudan for Christmas, scouring Arabic social media in search of scraps of information about a story unfolding in Tunisia; a story the Arab media was censoring and the western media was still ignoring. A street trader, Mohammed Bouazizi, had set himself on fire in protest at the government in the city of Sidi Bouzid, sparking demonstrations that spread across the country.

Weeks before the protests toppled Tunisia’s president-for-life, you could see that something about this uprising was different. There was something about the way the protests resonated in households around the Arab world, the intensity of the moral outrage and the force of the momentum that felt new and exciting.

Continue reading...

Lost artefact from Great Pyramid of Giza found in cigar box in Aberdeen

Posted on by

Wooden fragment from at least 3000BC discovered by chance by Egyptian university researcher

A lost artefact from the Great Pyramid of Giza, one of only three objects ever recovered from inside the last remaining wonder of the ancient world, has been found in a chance discovery at the University of Aberdeen.

Curatorial assistant Abeer Eladany, originally from Egypt, was reviewing items in the university’s Asia collection when she came across a cigar box marked with her country’s former flag.

Continue reading...

10 years on, the Arab spring’s explosive rage and dashed dreams

Posted on by

The extraordinary shock of people power gave way to a bitter backlash. So where to now?

A decade ago this week, a young fruit seller called Mohammed Bouazizi set himself alight outside the provincial headquarters of his home town in Tunisia, in protest against local police officials who had seized his cart and produce.

Accounts of the 26-year-old’s shocking act rippled through his homeland, where hundreds of thousands of people who had also been humiliated by an atrophied state and its officials now found the courage to raise their voices.

Continue reading...

Egypt cheated all Italians, says family of Giulio Regeni

Posted on by

Struggle of murdered student’s parents has come to symbolise broader fight for justice

When the body of the Italian doctoral student Giulio Regeni was found by the side of a Cairo highway in 2016, his mother later said she only recognised her son’s corpse by “the tip of his nose”, as he had suffered such extensive torture.

Almost five years after Regeni’s body was found, and following years of investigation by the Italian authorities, prosecutors in Rome on Thursday charged four men with Regeni’s kidnapping, including one accused of grievous bodily harm.

Continue reading...

Indictment of Egyptian officials over Giulio Regeni murder brings hope

Posted on by

Analysis: prosecutions seen as opportunity for national security apparatus to come under scrutiny

Almost five years after the mutilated corpse of Giulio Regeni was found on the outskirts of Cairo in February 2016, Italian prosecutors have charged four members of Egypt’s national security agency over his kidnapping and murder.

For those working to uncover the truth about how Regeni died and why Egyptian security forces had entrapped the student in a web of surveillance, it was a day heavy with emotion.

Continue reading...

Italy charges Egyptian security agency officials over murder of Giulio Regeni

Posted on by

Cairo killing of doctoral student in 2016 long believed to be work of Egypt’s security forces

Prosecutors in Italy have charged four members of Egypt’s national security agency over the kidnapping and murder of the Italian doctoral student Giulio Regeni in Cairo.

Tariq Saber, Athar Kamel Mohamed Ibrahim, Capt Uhsam Helmi and Maj Magdi Ibrahim Abdelal Sharif are accused of kidnapping the young student in 2016, and Sharif is also accused of grievous bodily harm and murder.

Continue reading...

Rita Ora apologises for second breach of Covid lockdown restrictions

Posted on by

Singer should have been self-isolating after trip to Egypt when she celebrated birthday at London venue

British singer Rita Ora has apologised after reports emerged that she should have been self-isolating when she celebrated her birthday at a London restaurant last month.

The 30-year-old flew to Egypt in a private jet on 21 November to perform at the five-star W Hotel in Cairo, an appearance for which she was paid a six-figure sum, the Mail on Sunday reported.

Continue reading...

Breakthrough in Qatar dispute after ‘fruitful’ talks to end conflict

Posted on by

Saudi prince hails progress in negotiations brokered by Kuwait and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner

A breakthrough in the three-and-a-half-year dispute between Qatar and its neighbouring Gulf states appears to have been achieved following what were described as “fruitful” talks to resolve the conflict.

The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, said “significant progress” had been reached in the last few days and he was optimistic all countries were close to finalising a resolution.

Continue reading...

Egypt frees three rights workers after outcry over crackdown

Posted on by

Three staffers at one of the last rights groups still operating in Egypt were arrested last month

Three Egyptian human rights workers who were arrested and charged with terrorism-related offences last month have been freed after an outcry over the government’s crackdown on one of the last rights groups still operating in the country.

The arrests and moves against the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, or EIPR, had underlined the extent to which President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi’s government has gone in silencing dissent and independent organisation during years of arrests and other forms of intimidation.

Continue reading...

Egypt cracking down harder on human rights groups, experts say

Posted on by

Three members of Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights detained over ‘fake news’

Emboldened Egyptian security forces have stepped up their crackdown on human rights groups with a series of unprecedented recent moves triggering widespread alarm, experts are warning.

Last week the head of a leading human rights organisation and two of its staff members were detained after the group met with foreign diplomats in Cairo.

Continue reading...