Foreign secretary asked to intervene as death penalty hangs over four young men at mass trial in Cairo
A group of British MPs has called on the foreign secretary to intervene in the case of four young men facing a death sentence in Cairo for crimes they allegedly committed as children.
One of them is Ammar El Sudany, who was in the bath when Egyptian security forces raided his home.
Continue reading...Prime minister claims ‘Egypt is safe and the situation is under control’, though 45 of the ship’s passengers are now infected
Egypt has announced 33 new cases of Covid-19 as the Arab world’s most populous nation works to contain both the virus and public concern.
Thirty-three additional infected passengers were found onboard a cruise ship that had travelled between the southern Egyptian cities of Aswan and Luxor. Twelve cases on the same ship were announced yesterday, bringing the number of infections onboard so far to 45.
Continue reading...King Djoser’s step pyramid is the main attraction at the Saqqara necropolis. A restoration project that began in 2006 and was paused between 2011 and 2013 worked on the outer facades, internal corridors leading to the burial well, the stone sarcophagus and stairs at two entrances
Continue reading...With a voice adored by Bob Dylan, Robert Plant and millions across the Arab world, Umm Kulthum rejected gender norms with her powerful, political music. But can her 90-minute songs work in a new stage musical?
You hear the Umm Kulthum cafe before you see it. Violins swoon and a monumental voice surges from a doorway in Cairo’s Tawfiqia neighbourhood. Outside, couples smoke shisha on plastic chairs, dwarfed by two immense golden busts depicting the singer known variously as “the star of the east”, “mother of the Arabs” and “Egypt’s fourth pyramid”.
Umm Kulthum recorded about 300 songs over a 60-year career and her words of love, loss and longing drift reliably from taxis, radios and cafes across the Arab world today, 45 years after her death. Despite singing complex Arabic poetry, she influenced some of the west’s greatest singers. Bob Dylan said: “She’s great. She really is.” Shakira and Beyoncé have performed dance routines to her music. Maria Callas called her “the incomparable voice”.
Continue reading...The late dictator’s downfall is a cautionary tale for those who seek to obliterate dissent in a country of 100 million people
On 28 January 2011, a reporter colleague and I boarded a ghostly Cairo metro train travelling east below the Nile, from Giza to the city centre. Far above us, the capital was ablaze. Pockets of fighting between anti-government protesters and police shook the streets; bridges across the river were revolutionary battlegrounds; ribbons of smoke and teargas filled the sky. In a final, futile attempt at self-preservation, the country’s authoritarian regime had shut down mobile networks and switched off the internet, so reliable news was hard to come by and we didn’t know who would emerge triumphant from what had already been termed Egypt’s “day of rage”.
Related: Hosni Mubarak obituary
Continue reading...Egypt pays tribute to former president, who died at 91, amid tight security in Cairo
Former Egyptian autocrat Hosni Mubarak has been buried in Cairo with a full military funeral, following his death aged 91.
Mubarak’s body was transported from a mosque on the outskirts of the Egyptian capital to the family cemetery on Wednesday amid tight security. His coffin was pulled by horse-drawn carriages alongside a procession led by his sons Gamal and Alaa Mubarak and the current president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, flanked by military top brass and leading religious figures.
Continue reading...Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s autocratic former president who ruled with an iron fist for three decades before being toppled during the Arab spring protests in 2011, has died aged 91. We look back at the life and legacy of one of Egypt's most notorious leaders, and the corruption, incompetence and human rights violations that took place under his rule
Continue reading...Celebrations as a TUI flight from Gatwick becomes one of the first to land in the Egyptian resort town after the bombing of a Russian airliner
British tourists have arrived on one of the first flights from the UK to the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh since restrictions were lifted.
Flights between Britain and Sharm el-Sheikh were halted in November 2015, following the bombing of a Russian airliner soon after take-off from Sharm el-Sheikh airport, which killed all 224 people on board.
Continue reading...Human rights activist Patrick Zaky had been studying at the University of Bologna
The family of an Italian doctoral student murdered in Cairo have urged “democratic governments” to intervene in the case of an Egyptian master’s student in Italy who was detained on arrival in Egypt last week.
Paola and Claudio Regeni, the parents of Giulio Regeni, whose mutilated corpse was found in 2016, called on Italy to do more to help Patrick Zaky, an Egyptian student and activist studying at the University of Bologna who was detained and reportedly tortured on arrival in Cairo to visit his family.
Continue reading...Case of Patrick Zaky doing master’s on gender and human rights echoes that of murdered Italian student Giulio Regeni
An Egyptian researcher who is studying in Italy has been arrested on arrival in Cairo on charges of “harming national security”, sparking alarm among Italy’s authorities who fear a repeat of the case of murdered Italian doctoral student Giulio Regeni.
Patrick Zaky, a graduate student at the University of Bologna, was arrested at Cairo airport during a visit to see family. Zaky is a researcher on gender and human rights at the Cairo-based Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), which said he was covertly taken from the airport and interrogated at facilities belonging to Egypt’s national security agency in Cairo and Mansoura, his home town.
Continue reading...Child had been taken by her family to have the procedure, still prevalent in the country despite new laws to combat it
A doctor has been arrested after the death of a 12-year-old girl he had performed female genital mutilation (FGM) on.
Nada Hassan Abdel-Maqsoud bled to death at a private clinic in Manfalout, close to the city of Assiut, after her parents, uncle and aunt took her for the procedure.
Continue reading...Italy demands concrete actions from Egypt, especially on judicial cooperation
Four years after the mutilated body of the Italian doctoral student Giulio Regeni was discovered in Cairo, Italian politicians and officials are pinning hope for fresh information on an Italian parliamentary inquiry, as Egypt continues to obstruct investigations.
Regeni’s body was found on 3 February 2016, nine days after he had disappeared in the Egyptian capital. His mother, Paola, said later she only recognised his corpse by the “tip of his nose”, given the extensive torture he had endured. Widespread suspicions that Egyptian security forces were responsible for his disappearance and murder were reinforced in 2018 when Italian prosecutors named five officials as suspects.
Continue reading...Nine years after uprising, Egyptians face strict controls on political activity and free speech
Mohammed Abdellatif did not see himself as a political activist. As a dentist in Cairo, his concerns were focused on healthcare and issues such as a lack of medical supplies and low wages for doctors.
Then at 3am one day last September, 50 armed security agents stormed his family home. Abdellatif’s alleged crime was to have launched a social media campaign demanding better pay and conditions for health workers in Egypt. The previous month while working at a public hospital in Giza, he had started the Twitter hashtag “Egyptian doctors are angry”.
Continue reading...Researchers in UK recreate Nesyamun’s sound using 3D version of his vocal tract
The “voice” of an ancient Egyptian priest has been heard for the first time since he died and was mummified 3,000 years ago, researchers have said.
Nesyamun lived under the pharaoh Rameses XI, who reigned around the beginning of the 11th century BC.
Continue reading...This remarkable example of ‘slow journalism’ links the pharaohs with Egypt’s Arab spring
Of all the ill-fated revolutions of the Arab spring, none started more optimistically, or ended more disappointingly, than that of Egypt. President Hosni Mubarak, who was overthrown with such rejoicing at the beginning of the revolution in 2011, was perhaps not the worst of the Arab dictators. His rise, on the classless elevator of the Egyptian armed forces, was entirely the result of his competence in the military. Cairo intellectuals disliked his backslapping air-force bonhomie and quickly dubbed him “La vache qui rit”, after the laughing cow on the French processed cheese to whom the president was said to bear a resemblance.
For two decades Mubarak provided Egypt with a plodding yet stable government, which many compared favourably with the attention-seeking antics of his predecessors Nasser and Sadat. It should not be forgotten that his ministers were corrupt, his police casually and strikingly brutal, and torture in Egyptian prisons was rife. Yet his regime was still better than its counterparts in Syria and Iraq.
Continue reading...As the Disney movie earns $1bn at the global box office, the actor says ‘I feel like I’m going to be overlooked and underestimated for a long time’
Mena Massoud, the Egyptian-Canadian actor who played Aladdin in the recent Disney live-action remake, has said he hasn’t had a single audition since its release.
Massoud told the Daily Beast: “I’m kind of tired of staying quiet about it … I want people to know that it’s not always dandelions and roses when you’re doing something like Aladdin. ‘He must have made millions. He must be getting all these offers.’ It’s none of those things. I haven’t had a single audition since Aladdin came out.”
Continue reading...Nile basin countries fear for their future water supplies as the Grand Renaissance hydroelectric project reaches completion
A new round of high-level talks has started in Cairo between three Nile basin countries aimed at resolving disputes over Ethiopia’s controversial Grand Renaissance dam, which is set to become Africa’s biggest hydroelectric power plant.
Analysts fear that Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia could be drawn into conflict if the dispute is not resolved before the $5bn dam begins operating next year.
Continue reading...Mada Masr is the last major independent outlet amid clampdown on media freedom
Egyptian security officials have raided the offices of the country’s last major independent news outlet, which has been described as the last bastion of press freedom in Egypt.
“Plainclothes security forces have raided Mada Masr’s office in Cairo,” the website tweete. “Staff are currently being held inside, and their phones have been switched off.”
Continue reading...Discoveries near Saqqara necropolis shed light on ancient use of animals in worship
A rare discovery of mummified big cats, cobras and crocodiles has been unveiled by Egyptian authorities.
Egyptologists are thrilled at the cache, which includes dozens of mummified cats, 75 wooden and bronze cat statues, mummified birds, and an enormous mummified beetle three to four times the normal size.
Continue reading...The illustrated city: As rapid development sweeps through Alexandria, architect Mohamed Gohar is trying to document both the past and the present of this ancient Egyptian port city
For a long time I have been attached to the past – or the past is attached to me. Either way, the past of my city, the ancient Egyptian port city of Alexandria, is something I feel incredibly strongly about.
As an architect, I have been deeply impacted by the rapid loss of buildings along with their architectural and historical values. The constant fear that the essence of the city will disappear and that I will lose all traces of my own past here, as well as the pasts of others who have lived in this city over the centuries gave me the urge to start documenting what is still standing before people or time tear it down.
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