The ITUC has called on Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to ensure a full investigation into the murder of PhD student Giulio Regeni in Cairo
January 24, 2017
Twenty-eight-year-old Regeni, a
student at Cambridge University researching Egypt’s independent trade
union movement, was brutally tortured and murdered on 25 January.
Sharan Burrow, ITUC General Secretary, said, “This atrocity, against
an innocent young researcher, must be fully investigated and the
perpetrators brought to justice. The heavy-handed tactics of Egypt’s
police, the string of disappearances in recent months and the mounting
repression of civil society show that President Sisi’s government is
heading in the wrong direction.
The prospects for fundamental democratic rights and freedoms,
including the right to freedom of association for the country’s workers,
are receding by the day. We call upon the government to change course,
to support and protect human rights and avoid yet more bloodshed and
the possibility of further mass unrest.”
A new report by Oxfam warns of the growing and dangerous concentration of wealth
Monday 16, January 2017
The world’s eight richest billionaires control the same wealth
between them as the poorest half of the globe’s population, according to
a charity warning of an ever-increasing and dangerous concentration of
wealth.
In a report published to coincide with the start of the week-long World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Oxfam
said it was “beyond grotesque” that a handful of rich men headed by the
Microsoft founder Bill Gates are worth $426bn (£350bn), equivalent to
the wealth of 3.6 billion people.
The development charity called for a new economic model to reverse an
inequality trend that it said helped to explain Brexit and Donald
Trump’s victory in the US presidential election. Oxfam
blamed rising inequality on aggressive wage restraint, tax dodging and
the squeezing of producers by companies, adding that businesses were too
focused on delivering ever-higher returns to wealthy owners and top
executives.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) said last week that rising inequality and social polarisation posed two of the biggest risks to the global economy in 2017 and could result in the rolling back of globalisation.
Oxfam said the world’s poorest 50% owned the same in assets as the
$426bn owned by a group headed by Gates, Amancio Ortega, the founder of
the Spanish fashion chain Zara, and Warren Buffett, the renowned investor and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway.
The others are Carlos Slim Helú: the Mexican telecoms tycoon and
owner of conglomerate Grupo Carso; Jeff Bezos: the founder of Amazon;
Mark Zuckerberg: the founder of Facebook; Larry Ellison, chief executive
of US tech firm Oracle; and Michael Bloomberg; a former mayor of New
York and founder and owner of the Bloomberg news and financial
information service.
Last year, Oxfam said the world’s 62 richest billionaires were as wealthy as half the world’s population.
However, the number has dropped to eight in 2017 because new
information shows that poverty in China and India is worse than
previously thought, making the bottom 50% even worse off and widening
the gap between rich and poor.
With members of the forum due to arrive on Monday in Switzerland, where guests will range from the Chinese president Xi Jinping,
to pop star Shakira, the WEF released its own inclusive growth and
development report in which it said median income had fallen by an
average of 2.4% between 2008 and 2013 across 26 advanced nations.
Norway, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Iceland and Denmark filled the top
five places in the WEF’s inclusive development index, with Britain 21st
and the US 23rd. The body that organises the Davos event said rising inequality was not an “iron law of capitalism”, but a matter of making the right policy choices.
The WEF report found that 51% of the 103 countries for which data was
available saw their inclusive development index scores decline over the
past five years, “attesting to the legitimacy of public concern and the
challenge facing policymakers regarding the difficulty of translating
economic growth into broad social progress.”
Basing its research on the Forbes rich list and data provided by investment bank Credit Suisse, Oxfam said the vast majority of people in the bottom half of the world’s
population were facing a daily struggle to survive, with 70% of them
living in low-income countries.
It was four years since the WEF had first identified inequality as a
threat to social stability, but that the gap between rich and poor has
continued to widen, Oxfam added.
“From Brexit to the success of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, a
worrying rise in racism and the widespread disillusionment with
mainstream politics, there are increasing signs that more and more
people in rich countries are no longer willing to tolerate the status
quo,” the report said.
The charity said new information had shown that poor people in China
and India owned even fewer assets than previously thought, making the
wealth gap more pronounced than it thought a year ago, when it announced
that 62 billionaires owned the same wealth as the poorest half of the global population.
Mark Goldring, chief executive of Oxfam GB, said:“This
year’s snapshot of inequality is clearer, more accurate and more
shocking than ever before. It is beyond grotesque that a group of men
who could easily fit in a single golf buggy own more than the poorest
half of humanity.
“While one in nine people on the planet will go to bed hungry
tonight, a small handful of billionaires have so much wealth they would
need several lifetimes to spend it. The fact that a super-rich elite are
able to prosper at the expense of the rest of us at home and overseas
shows how warped our economy has become.”
Mark Littlewood, director general at the Institute of Economic
Affairs thinktank, said: “Once again Oxfam have come out with a report
that demonizes capitalism, conveniently skimming over the fact that free
markets have helped over 100 million people rise out of poverty in the
last year alone.”
The Oxfam report added that since 2015 the richest 1% has owned more
wealth than the rest of the planet. It said that over the next 20 years,
500 people will hand over $2.1tn to their heirs – a sum larger than the
annual GDP of India, a country with 1.3 billion people. Between 1988
and 2011 the incomes of the poorest 10% increased by just $65, while the
incomes of the richest 1% grew by $11,800 – 182 times as much.
Oxfam called for fundamental change to ensure that economies worked for everyone, not just “a privileged few.”
*Photo by Altaf Qadri, courtesy of the Associated Press
A dozen leading UK trade unionists released a statement today
condemning the latest attacks on workers’ rights in Egypt. Members of
the national executive committees of the university workers’ union UCU,
civil servants’ union PCS and the National Union of Teachers were joined
by Bakers and Food workers’ union president Ian Hodson in a protest
letter responding to the storming of the IFFCO factory in Suez
by Egyptian security forces on 3 January.
The statement also condemns
the on-going persecution of the Cairo bus workers’ leaders by the
Egyptian authorities, as a number of bus worker activists appeal a
two-year jail sentence and 100,000 LE (£5,000) fine imposed in absentia
in relation to a strike in 2014.
What you can do:
Rush messages of protest to your Egyptian embassy, calling for the immediate release of detained worker activists
Protest statement: Egyptian workers’ rights under threat
Once again trade unionists in Egypt are under threat from the
military regime, simply for exercising their rights to organise and
strike.
On 3 January, police stormed the IFFCO oils and soap factory in
Suez and forcibly broke up a sit-in by striking workers. Eleven workers
have been arrested and could face long jail terms and large fines.
The
attack on IFFCO follows other assaults on workers’ rights, including the
arrest and detention of workers in the Alexandria Shipyard who were
demanding better pay and the implementation of health and safety
procedures, and of leaders of the Cairo bus workers’ union who were
seized from their homes in September 2016 on charges of ‘incitement to
strike.’ Five members of the bus workers’ union are already appealing a
two-year jail sentence and an LE100,000 fine (around £5000) imposed in
absentia on charges related to a previous strike.
Egyptian workers are fighting to feed their families as prices spiral
out of control. The International Monetary Fund and foreign governments
want to see more cuts to subsidies, welfare and services as they push
for neo-liberal reforms which aim to make the poor pay the price for
Egypt’s economic crisis.
We call on Egypt’s military regime to stop the
persecution of worker activists and release all those unjustly detained.
We extend our solidarity to all those in Egypt carrying on the struggle
for bread, freedom and social justice.
8 January 2017
Ian Hodson, National President, Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU)
Ian Bradley, Unite the Union, London Construction workers Branch
Marianne Owens, PCS National Executive Committee (Civil Servants union)
Steve West, PCS DWP Group Executive Committee (Civil Servants union)
Candy Udwin, PCS National Executive Committee (Civil Servants union)
Marianne Owens, PCS National Executive Committee (Civil Servants union)
Sean Wallis, UCU National Executive Committee (University workers union)
Mandy Brown, UCU National Executive Committee (University workers union)
Carlo Morrelli, UCU National Executive Committee (University workers union)
Jess Edwards, National Union of Teachers, National Executive Committee
Stefan Simms, Nation Union of Teachers, National Executive Committee
Steve Guy, Unite the Union shop steward, Gatwick Airport
London street art, in solidarity with the imprisoned Egyptian blogger & leftist activist Alaa Abdel Fattah.
Alaa has spent 2.5 years in Cairo's Torah Prison - half of his five year prison sentence - for partaking in a non-violent protest, back in November 2013.
Alaa is just one of the tens of thousands of political prisoners who have languished in the jail cells of Dictator Sisi - for peacefully expressing their opinions, or for opposing the military dictatorship.
FREE ALAA! FREE THE THOUSANDS OF OTHER POLITICAL PRISONERS!
More than one-third of all Saudi-led air raids on Yemen
have hit civilian sites, such as school buildings, hospitals, markets,
mosques and economic infrastructure, according to the most comprehensive
survey of the conflict.
The findings, revealed by the Guardian
on Friday, contrast with claims by the Saudi government, backed by its
US and British allies, that Riyadh is seeking to minimise civilian
casualties.
The survey, conducted by the Yemen Data Project,
a group of academics, human rights organisers and activists, will add
to mounting pressure in the UK and the US on the Saudi-led coalition,
which is facing accusations of breaching international humanitarian law.
It will refocus attention on UK arms sales
to Saudi Arabia, worth more than £3.3bn since the air campaign began,
and the role of British military personnel attached to the Saudi command
and control centre, from which air operations are being mounted. Two
British parliamentary committees have called for the suspension of such sales until a credible and independent inquiry has been conducted.
Saudi Arabia
disputed the Yemen Data Project figures, describing them as “vastly
exaggerated”, and challenged the accuracy of the methodology, saying
somewhere such as a school building might have been a school a year ago,
but was now being used by rebel fighters.
The independent and non-partisan survey, based on open-source data,
including research on the ground, records more than 8,600 air attacks
between March 2015, when the Saudi-led campaign began, and the end of
August this year. Of these, 3,577 were listed as having hit military
sites and 3,158 struck non-military sites.
Where it could not be established whether a location attacked was
civilian or military, the strikes were classified as unknown, of which
there are 1,882 incidents.
Saudi Arabia intervened in March 2015 to support the Yemeni government against Iran-backed Houthi rebels
in control of the capital, Sana’a. The UN has put the death toll of the
18-month war at more than 10,000, with 3,799 of them being civilians.
Human rights organisations in Yemen have documented repeated
violations by the Houthis, including the use of landmines and
indiscriminate shelling. Human Rights Watch noted this year that Yemeni
civilians had “suffered serious laws of war violations by all sides.”
The Yemen Data Project has chosen to focus exclusively on the impact
of the air campaign, rather than fighting on the ground, citing the
difficulty of gaining access to frontline fighting and impartial
information.
One of the most problematic findings of the survey for Saudi Arabia
is the number of reported repeat attacks. While some attacks on civilian
sites can be explained away as mistakes or being the location of
military camps in densely populated areas such as Sana’a, repeated
strikes on school buildings and hospitals will add to demands for an
independent investigation.
One school building in Dhubab, Taiz governorate, has been hit nine
times, according to the data. A market in Sirwah, Marib governorate, has
been struck 24 times.
The UK’s shadow defence secretary, Clive Lewis, said of the survey:
“It’s sickening to think of British-built weapons being used against
civilians and the government has an absolute responsibility to do
everything in its power to stop that from happening. But as ministers
turn a blind eye to the conflict in Yemen, evidence that humanitarian
law has been violated is becoming harder to ignore by the day.”
The Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesperson, Tom Brake, said
the data added more weight to calls for the suspension of arms sales.
“Despite consistent evidence showing targeting of civilians, first
Cameron and now May’s governments have continued their hypocritical
defence of Saudi Arabia’s brutal campaign in Yemen,” he said.
Sixty-four members of the US Congress, from the Democratic and
Republican parties, sent a letter to Barack Obama last month urging the
president to postpone sales of new arms to Saudi Arabia. The US also provides the Saudis with intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and logistical support.
The Democratic congressman Ted Lieu, who organised the letter and is a
colonel in the US air force reserve, said: “The actions of the
Saudi-led coalition in Yemen are as reprehensible as they are illegal.
The multiple, repeated airstrikes on civilians look like war crimes.”
Campaigners are calling for an independent inquiry to establish whether
attacks on civilian targets are because of poor intelligence, lack of
precision on the part of the Saudi-led coalition planes, or a high
degree of disregard for civilian lives.
Staff at the Yemen Data Project said they adopted rigorous standards,
using news reports aligned with both sides in the conflict and
crosschecked against other sources, such as social media,
non-governmental organisations and evidence on the ground.
According to the project, the Saudi-led coalition hit more
non-military sites than military in five of the past 18 months. In
October 2015, the figures were 291, compared with 208; in November, 126
against 34; December, 137 compared with 62; February 2016, 292 to 139,
and March, 122 compared with 80.
Over the course of the war, the survey lists 942 attacks on
residential areas, 114 on markets, 34 on mosques, 147 on school
buildings, 26 on universities and 378 on transport.
Asked by the Guardian about the figures during a visit to London, the
Saudi foreign minister, Adel bin Ahmed al-Jubeir, portrayed the Saudi
air force as professional and armed with precision weapons.
He said the Houthis had “turned schools and hospitals and mosques
into command and control centres. They have turned them into weapons
depots in a way that they are no longer civilian targets. They are
military targets. They might have been a school a year ago. But they
were not a school when they were bombed”.
The attachment of British military staff at the Saudi command centre has become increasingly controversial.
A UK Ministry of Defence spokesperson said: “The United Kingdom is
not a member of the Saudi-led coalition and UK personnel are not
involved in directing or conducting operations in Yemen, or in the
target selection process.
“The MoD does provide training and shares best practice to the Royal
Saudi air force, including training on targeting. We also provided
guidance and advice to support continued compliance with international
humanitarian law.”
The Yemen Data Project was set up this year in response to a lack of
reliable official military figures. It says the project brings together
figures from backgrounds in security, academia, human rights and
humanitarian issues, and describes it as “independently funded to avoid
any partisan affiliation.”
“Where independent reporting is not available, the data has been
cross-referenced with sources from opposing sides to the conflict to
ensure the reporting is as accurate and impartial as possible,” the
project said.
Given the general lack of transparency from parties to the conflict
and a paucity of independent reporting on the ground, the data had been
verified and cross-referenced to the greatest extent possible, it added.
The number of civilian casualties is not included, because much of
this area is highly politicised and it has not been possible to
independently verify claims.
Egypt still has the most landmines of any country in the world, according to the independent nongovernmental organization the Landmine Struggle Center, with well over 21 million deadly devices hidden in its sands, down from an estimated 23 million.
The
estimated figure includes un-detonated devices that remain concealed or
buried in the earth. The majority are located in the Western Desert and
date back nearly 75 years to World War II.
Egypt is littered with nearly 20 percent of all world’s landmines — globally estimated at 110 million — which continue to claim lives and limbs. The state may still be producing, stockpiling and perhaps even exporting its domestically made landmines to other countries.
To
commemorate the day, International Cooperation Minister Sahar Nasr
launched the “Together for Egypt, Stop Landmines” campaign in Matrouh
Governorate, which has the highest concentration of landmines in the
country. Modest demining efforts are being planned,
while thousands of pamphlets to raise awareness regarding the dangers
of landmines are being distributed among schoolchildren and local
residents.
This year Egypt has received international and private grants amounting to US$17.5 million, according to the state-owned daily newspaper Al-Akhbar
— $12 million of which has been earmarked for mine-detecting equipment,
while the remaining $5.5 million has been allocated to the assistance
of landmine victims and their families.
Over the past few
decades, Egypt has called for international assistance — particularly
from the formerly warring parties of Germany, Italy and the UK — in its
efforts to demine thousands of square kilometers which were littered
with over 17.5 million mines during the World War II battles of
Al-Alamein along Egypt’s border with Libya.
The Foreign Affairs Ministry estimates that
demining efforts from 1981 to the present have succeeded in removing
nearly 3 million landmines, mostly from the Western Desert, thus
reclaiming tens of thousands of hectares of land.
Official
estimates suggest that hundreds have been killed and thousands of others
seriously injured in minefields leftover from World War II, locally
known as “hadayeq al-shaytan” (the devil’s gardens.)
While there are no definitive figures as to how many landmines and victims there are in Egypt, the Foreign Affairs Ministry reports there
have been more than 8,313 documented casualties in the Western Desert
alone since 1982, among both civilians and members of the Armed Forces.
These are reported to include at least 696 fatalities and 7,617 serious
injuries. Real numbers of casualties may be significantly higher, as
many cases are not officially reported.
Mines have also killed and maimed scores of others along Egypt’s eastern border, although these numbers have not been recorded.
Among the most recent victims of landmines included two employees from the Antiquities Ministry who were killed on February 21 while conducting excavations around an archaeological site in the Suez Canal Governorate of Ismailia. A third employee was reportedly injured in this blast.
Apart
from landmines dating to World War II, armed Islamist elements are
currently involved in planting improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in
the northern Sinai Peninsula targeting police and armed forces.
Al-Akhbar newspaper reported that
on March 21, one farmer was killed and another seriously wounded when
their tractor drove over and detonated a landmine in Rafah near the
border with Gaza and Israel. More recently, on April 2 the privately
owned Al-Tahrir news site reported
that a 9-year-old boy was killed in a landmine explosion in Rafah. A
woman and man were also hospitalized the same day after having been
seriously injured in two separate landmine blasts in the Rafah area.
Beyond
the costly human toll, the presence of old wartime landmines of both
the anti-personnel and anti-tank types continue to render thousands of
kilometers of land unusable for agriculture, infrastructure development
or petroleum and mineral prospecting.
According to the website of the State Information Service,
Egypt faces numerous obstacles in its struggle to demine its lands.
Chief among these obstacles is the very hefty price tag associated with
de-mining. For instance, the clearing of Al-Alamein’s minefields is
estimated to cost a staggering $20 billion.
Other factors
hindering Egypt’s de-mining efforts include the loss or absence of maps
indicating the locations of mines, although the UK has reportedly handed
over maps of its World War II minefields.
There is also the
gargantuan challenge of safely detecting mines that have gradually
shifted over the course of decades — sunk deeper into the earth, covered
by shifting sand dunes or washed away from their original locations.
The
absence of roads leading to these minefields, along with a lack of
mine-detecting equipment, compounds the difficulties associated with
de-mining efforts.
According to the State Information Service site,
several countries have contributed to Egypt’s demining campaigns with
millions of dollars’ worth of funds and mine-detectors, including the
UK, Germany, Italy, New Zealand and the European Union.
The United
Nation’s theme for April 4, 2016 is “Mine action is humanitarian
action, because mine action saves lives.” Other than Egypt, the nations most affected by landmines include Iran, Angola, Afghanistan, Iraq and Cambodia.
As for the UN’s Mine-Ban Convention (Ottawa
Treaty of 1997), to date a total of 162 countries have ratified it.
However, Egypt is among a club of 35 states — including the USA, Russia,
China and Israel — that has neither signed nor ratified the convention.
Citing
security concerns pertaining to cross-border threats of terrorism and
drug smuggling, Egypt continues refuse to join the convention. “Egypt
believes the agreement is deficient, where it made no association
between the disposal by countries of their stockpiles of mines, and the
provision of assistance to countries in clearing mines from their
territories,” said the State Information Service.
However, Egypt’s arguments regarding security concerns ring hollow in light of human rights reports indicating
that it has in previous years and decades produced, stockpiled and even
exported its domestically made landmines to several war-torn states,
including Afghanistan, Angola, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Iraq, Nicaragua,
Rwanda and Somalia.
Details regarding Egypt’s production and exportation of mines are not made publicly available. However, officials have reportedly informed the UN that Egypt has refrained from producing or exporting anti-personnel landmines since the 1980s.
The Italian government is urging Egyptian
authorities to heighten cooperation with their investigations into the
torture and murder of Italian student Giulio Regeni, whose body was
found in a Cairo suburb on February 3. The pleas came after additional
evidence supporting the theory that Regeni was tortured to death emerged
on Monday, according to Italian coroners.
New evidence from the
autopsy conducted in Italy showed that the nails on the 28-year-old's
toes and fingers had all been ripped off, and that all of his fingers
were broken, the Associated Press reported.
On Sunday, Italy’s Interior Ministry said the PhD student was subjected to “animal-like” brutality.
That day, results from Regeni’s autopsy suggested
a broken cervical vertebra was the cause of death. The autopsy also
revealed that Regeni’s body bore the marks of cigarette burns, cuts,
several stab wounds and bruising.
"We will not settle for
purported truths, as we have said on the occasion of the two arrests
initially linked to the death of Giulio Regeni,” Italian Foreign
Minister Paolo Gentiloni told the Rome-based daily newspaper La
Repubblica on Monday.
Gentiloni was alluding to Egyptian security forces’ reports that two suspects in
Regeni’s death were arrested a few days ago. Scant information has been
released on the suspects, who were described by Interior Ministry
sources as criminals not linked to any terrorist organization.
On February 5, Egypt’s Foreign Affairs Ministry issued a statement declaring Egypt and Italy’s “mutual desire to uncover the reasons behind this incident and its perpetrators.”
However,
in his interview with La Repubblica, Gentiloni argued, "We want those
who are really responsible to be apprehended, and to be punished on the
basis of law."
Regeni’s murder “is a very grave stain on a fundamentally authoritarian regime,” Gennaro Migliore, Italy’s under-secretary to the justice minister, told the Associated Press.
Regeni
disappeared on January 25 – the fifth anniversary of the 2011 uprising
against the regime of Hosni Mubarak – near Tahrir Square in downtown
Cairo. Security forces were deployed en masse across the country that
day, and local media reported more than 150 opposition protesters were arrested.
In
hopes of unraveling the mystery of Regeni’s death, Italy dispatched
members of its special operations police unit to Cairo to partake in the
investigations.
On Monday, Egypt's Interior Ministry held a press conference
presided over by Interior Minister Magdy Abdel Ghaffar, in which he
touched on both Regeni’s death and the events of January 25.
He said he was "disturbed by the coverage of some media outlets,” who he accused of “jumping to conclusions."
"Some
have implied that Egypt's security services are involved in this
incident,” he noted, but “we only received notice of his disappearance
on January 27." The minister went on to claim that Egypt's security
forces are conducting investigations with "complete transparency and
professionalism" to help identify those responsible for Regeni's murder.
Ghaffar then offered his condolences to the Italian people.
On
Sunday night, around 2,000 people held a candle-lit march and vigil for
Regeni in his hometown of Fiumicello in northeastern Italy, Reuters
reported.
"We want a commitment at every level to shed light on what happened to Giulio,” Fiumicello Mayor Ennio Scridel told Reuters.
Regeni
was a PhD candidate at Cambridge University in London. He moved to
Egypt in September to research and write his thesis under the
supervision of a professor from the American University in Cairo (AUC).
Both Cambridge and AUC are reportedly involved in the investigations.
In an open letter of protest released
Monday that was initiated by Regeni's colleagues at the University of
Cambridge, more than 4,600 academics expressed their grief for his
death, while calling for investigations into his fate as well as the
fate of hundreds of Egyptians who have disappeared or been abused and
killed while in police custody.
The letter notes that Regeni
disappeared "in the midst of a security campaign which has resulted in
mass arbitrary arrests, a dramatic increase in reports of torture within
police stations and other cases of disappearances."
"We
therefore call on the Egyptian authorities to cooperate with an
independent and impartial investigation into all instances of forced
disappearances, cases of torture and deaths in detention during January
and February 2016," the letter concludes.
Regeni was writing about
the labor movement and independent trade unions in contemporary Egypt.
He wrote a number of articles on the Egyptian labor movement for the
Italian leftist paper Il Manifesto.
An Italian journalist investigating the murder told Mada Masr that, due
to security concerns, Regeni wrote his articles under the name Antonio
Drius. His articles were generally critical of President Adel Fattah
al-Sisi’s administration and his labor policies.
Giulio Regeni, 28, originally from Italy, was conducting fieldwork in Cairo
He was last seen in the centre of the city on the evening of January 25
Autopsy has revealed signs that he suffered 'inhuman animal-like violence'
Examination showed Mr Regeni's neck was twisted or struck during attack
A Cambridge
student whose battered body was found on the streets of Cairo suffered
'inhuman animal-like violence' during his death.
Italian
Giulio Regeni was found naked from the waist down near a highway
outside the Egyptian capital, nine days after he was reported missing.
An
autopsy examination has revealed that Mr Regeni's neck was twisted or
struck which broke a vertebra and left him unable to breathe.
Prosecutors
from Rome have now opened a murder investigation into the death of the
doctoral student and ministers are calling for Egypt's president Abdel
Fattah el-Sisi to fully cooperate.
Mr
Regeni, a student of Cambridge's Department of Politics and
International Studies, had been in Cairo for just a few months, as part
of his Ph.D. research into Egyptian labor movements, when he disappeared
on January 25.
He had left his apartment with a plan to travel by subway to meet a friend in the city, but was never seen again.
A
second autopsy in Italy has shed further light into Mr Regeni's death
with details so shocking that interior minister Angelino Alfano told Sky
TV that he struggled to catch his breath after reading the report.
While
opening details have been released analysis of tissue and body fluid,
which could help pinpoint or at least narrow the time frame when Mr
Regeni died, are expected to take several days.
Mr Alfano said the student had suffered 'something inhuman, animal-like, an unacceptable violence.'
Prosecutor
Ahmed Nagi, who leads the investigation team on the case, had
previously said 'all of his body, including his face' had bruises, cuts
from stabbings and burns from cigarettes, adding that it appeared to
have been a 'slow death.'
Italian police were dispatched to Cairo on Saturday and have started working with their Egyptian counterparts on the case.
Mr
Alfano said: 'I am convinced that it is in the interest of el-Sissi to
work together. No one can bring Giulio back to life, but bring the truth
to the surface will perhaps be able to save more lives.'
An
Egyptian friend of Mr Regeni, who was from Fiumicello in the north-east
of Italy, said that shortly before his death the student had been
seeking contacts for trade union activists to interview as part of his
research.
This
political research had been the main focus when the friend was
questioned by police following the Italian student's disappearance, he
said.
Another
friend explained he was travelling to downtown Cairo on the day of his
disappearance, he said: 'A friend called him after he didn't show up.
His cell was off then,' he told MailOnline, speaking on condition of
anonymity.
He
added: 'We briefly talked on the day of his disappearance, about two
hours earlier. He was happy and cheerful, he was about to meet a friend.
No indication of any worries whatsoever.
'I just feel terrible for his family, his girlfriend and all his friends.'
The Egyptian
authorities had intensified a crackdown on dissent ahead of the January
25 anniversary of the Arab Spring, with police raiding apartments in
downtown Cairo seeking signs of plans for organised protests and
checking people's social media accounts.
For years, rights groups have accused Egyptian police of regularly torturing detainees.
Over
the past year, they have also accused them of using 'forced
disappearances' - detaining suspected activists or Islamists in secret
without reporting their arrest.
The
Egyptian Association for Rights and Freedoms documented 314 such
disappearances in 2015, according to a lawyer, Halem Henish.
Most
later turned up in prison, but at least five were found at the morgue,
including one with signs of torture like burns and electric shocks.
He said the group has documented 35 disappearances so far in 2016, including at least two of whom have died.
*Photo of memorial for Giulio in Italy, courtesy of Getty Images
Vladimir Putin orders halt to all flights to Egyptian airports as
evidence mounts that flight 9268 was brought down rather than suffering
mechanical failure
Saturday 7 November, 2015
The sound of an apparent explosion can be heard on the flight
recorder of the Russian-operated plane that came down over the Sinai
peninsula, killing all 224 people on board, adding to the evidence that a
bomb was smuggled aboard, French media sources said on Friday.
Giving further credence to the idea that the plane crash was a terrorist act rather than because of structural failure, Russia, which for a week has been resistant to speculation about a bomb, suspended flights to all Egyptian airports.
An Egyptian-led international team of aviation experts, including
some from France, successfully recovered the black box, the flight
recorder, from the crash site.
Several French media outlets, including
the television station France 2, reported that the investigators had
listened to it and concluded that a bomb had detonated, which would seem
to rule out structural failure or pilot error.
The pilots can be heard
chatting normally, including contact with airport controllers, up until
the apparent explosion.
One source close to the investigation told AFP that the black box
data “strongly favours” this theory. While another source reportedly
said: “Everything was normal during the flight, absolutely normal, and
suddenly there was nothing,” adding that the plane had suffered “a
violent, sudden,” end.
A news conference is due to be held on Saturday afternoon by the
Egyptian aviation minister, Hossam Kamal, and the head of the Egypt-led
investigation into the disaster, although the government warned it could
be delayed.
While Russia had earlier suggested that the UK was acting prematurely
in halting flights to the Red Sea resort over terrorism fears, Vladimir Putin
ordered even wider restrictions on Friday, including halting all
flights from Cairo. The head of his federal security services said it
would be expedient to suspend flights until they had discovered why the
Airbus A321 had crashed last Saturday.
Meanwhile, the US announced new security measures – including tighter
screening – for flights from some airports in the Middle East. Jeh
Johnson, the homeland security secretary, said that the move was
motivated by “an abundance of caution.”
Russia initially dismissed
claims by Islamic State
of responsibility for downing the Metrojet flight, which came weeks
after threats of retaliation for Russian planes bombing Syria, and
Moscow reacted angrily after David Cameron said it was “more likely than
not” a bomb.
Suspicions had intensified throughout the week that the Metrojet
airliner was blown up. In addition to the French media reports about the
black box, according to reports from the US, a “flash” from the plane
was picked up by US satellites.
American officials have also told
Reuters that intercepted intelligence “chatter” involving militant
groups in Sinai supported the bomb theory. An Isis-affiliated group has
claimed three times that it was responsible for bringing down the plane.
Russia will now begin to bring home its tourists, up to 79,000 of whom are currently on holiday in Egypt, according to Russian tourist authorities.
However, there were chaotic scenes at Sharm el-Sheikh airport on
Friday as the schedule of “rescue flights” apparently agreed by airlines
disintegrated. Thousands of travellers who had gone to the airport
expecting to leave were further delayed. Eight easyJet
flights were cancelled in the morning, while empty Monarch, Thomas Cook
and Thomson airliners that had flown from Britain to bring back
holidaymakers were diverted before reaching Egypt.
EasyJet claimed that Egyptian authorities were blocking their extra
flights, as passengers were sent back to their hotels pending “top-level
government talks” to resolve the situation. In extraordinary scenes at
the airport, Britain’s ambassador to Cairo, John Casson, was heckled by
passengers, who shouted: “What is the problem and when can we go home?”
Tour operators promised that stranded customers would remain in their accommodation free of charge or be reimbursed.
Egypt’s civil aviation ministry denied that it was blocking any
flights, but said only eight of the 29 planned flights from Sharm
el-Sheikh to the UK on Friday were operating because the airport did not
have the capacity to store hold luggage. Only hand luggage is being
allowed on flights back to Britain amid fears that a bomb was placed in
the hold of the Metrojet plane.
Kamal, Egypt’s aviation minister, said: “The British airline
[easyJet] wants to schedule 18 flights at the same time and wants to
transport British passengers from Sharm el-Sheikh without their luggage,
which we would have to transport later. This constitutes a huge burden
on the airport because its capacity does not allow for that.”
Britain had expected that all passengers who were due to fly home
this week before flights were cancelled over security fears – about
3,500 people – would have returned by Friday night. Patrick McLoughlin,
the transport secretary, had told the BBC: “We feel that should be
possible.” But as the day unfolded, a Downing Street spokesman said the
situation was “very fluid … complicated and difficult.”
He said a
broken-down aircraft at the airport had contributed to delays on the
ground.
The first 180 tourists to return to the UK arrived at Gatwick airport
on an easyJet flight at 4.25pm, describing chaotic scenes before
departure. They said the pilot had assured them that intelligence
officials from MI5 and the Egyptian army had guarded their plane before
takeoff to ensure its safety.
Some were in tears outside the arrivals area of Gatwick. Emma Turner,
from Kent, said her husband had been hit by other tourists, whom she
believed to be Russian, amid scuffles to get through the departure area
in Egypt. “It was absolutely horrendous. We got hit twice in arrivals at
Sharm going through security. They had one door open and we had
children with us.”
Nicky Bull, from Bath, described the airport as “dreadful”, saying:
“I appreciate all the extra security, but they just could not cope with
it … everybody was getting crushed. Everybody was shouting and
screaming.”
Another passenger, Nathan Hazelwood, said security at Sharm was
shocking. “I think it’s a joke. We need a bit of a presence out there. I
don’t think we should be flying out there at all. Security needs to be
tightened.”
A further 179 passengers were on board a second easyJet plane that
landed at 5.30pm at Luton. A number of the cancelled UK –bound flights
were expected to operate on Saturday, while the hold luggage of
returning British passengers would be transported on separate flights
over the next 10 days.
While Egypt said the decision to cancel the majority of UK-bound
flights on Friday was purely logistical, an easyJet spokesman suggested
it was a political decision after Britain took a lead in restricting
travel. Egypt has rejected claims that Isis carried out the attack and
maintains there is nothing wrong with security at Sharm el-Sheikh
airport.
The country stands to lose a large, critical source of income in the
region if the tourist industry is in effect shut down because of
terrorism fears.
Isis, which has not generally pursued major attacks outside its base
in Syria, has claimed responsibility for bringing down the plane. The
suspension of flights to and from Egypt is the first sign that Moscow is
attaching credibility to the theory, but the Kremlin continued to
insist there is no presumption of a bomb.
A spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said: “The decision of the president to
suspend flights to Egypt does not mean that a terrorist attack is the
main suspected cause of the catastrophe with [the airline] Kogalymavia.”
He said Putin was not suspending flights to Egypt until the cause of
the crash was identified, but only “until it is possible to establish
the necessary safety level for air travel.”
Russian state television channels have largely shied away from
discussing the possibility that a terrorist bomb or missile could have
caused the crash, and politicians described the UK’s decision to cancel
Egypt flights as “psychological pressure” on Russia over its airstrikes
against Syrian rebels.
On Friday, a Downing Street spokesman said Britain’s curbs on flights
to the Red Sea resort were not dependent on the possible causes of the
Metrojet disaster. “The evidence we received suggested there was a
credible threat with regard to Sharm el-Sheikh airport, which is why we
have taken the actions we have.”
In 2014, about 1.9 million Russians visited Egypt, making it the
second most popular holiday destination for Russians after Turkey.
Although the number of Russians holidaying abroad has been falling since
the Ruble lost half its value in 2014, Egypt has remained popular, as
operators have lowered prices for package tours there.
Vladimir Kaganer, the general director of the tourist agency Tez
Tour, which said it had 10,000 clients in Egypt, claimed that an
evacuation order would be needed to bring Russian holidaymakers home.
“If people are at a resort and they come to them to say a plane was sent
to take you back, they would say: ‘No, we want to be on holiday for two
more weeks, we’re not going anywhere.’”
A third Russian government plane carrying victims’ remains and their
personal belongings from Egypt returned to St Petersburg on Friday. ___________
*Reporting by:Ewen MacAskill, Gwyn Topham, Peter Beaumont in Sharm el-Sheikh
Ben Quinn, Andrew Sparrow and Alec Luhn in Moscow
**Photo courtesy of European Pressphoto Agency (EPA)
(AFP) LONDON - Campaigners
opposed to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Thursday blocked
the entrance to Downing Street, the London residence of British Prime
Minister David Cameron, ahead of a meeting between the two leaders.
Around
200 demonstrators protested against Sisi’s human rights record, but
they were outnumbered by those proclaiming support for the Egyptian
leader.
Police removed five anti-Sisi protesters dressed in white
boiler suits, who lay on the pavement playing dead while blocking the
gates to Downing Street.
One had “Freedom” written on his back and another “Human Rights”, while another wore a noose around his neck.
The
protesters wore T-shirts with the four-fingered “Rabia” logo, which is
associated with those killed in the crackdown on the Rabaa al-Adawiya
protest camp in Cairo in 2013.
“He took the presidency by the sword, by killing,” said a man who gave his name as Abu Hamza.
“The world must know that he’s a killer and does not deserve the presidency.”
“Why
are protesters being arrested when it’s Sisi who should be arrested?”
said Anne Alexander of the Egypt Solidarity Initiative
“He shouldn’t be having lunch with the prime minister. He should be in jail.”
They were opposed by a group of around 300 Sisi supporters, who held placards reading: “We love you Sisi” and “Welcome Sisi”.
“Egypt was lost,” said 50-year-old restaurant owner Magdi Khalil.
“We were going on the path of Syria and Libya. Sisi and the army rescued Egypt.”
“Those (anti-Sisi protesters) are liars and traitors,” added an Egyptian policeman who declined to be named.
“They
are neither Muslim nor brotherhood. They plant bombs, they attack
police. I’m here getting treatment after being shot in the leg.”
Sisi
and Cameron were set to talk Thursday on security and the Sinai plane
crash, as concerns mount it could have been caused by a bomb.
Britain
on Wednesday suspended flights to and from the Red Sea resort of Sharm
el-Sheikh due to new information that suggested a “significant
possibility” the crash was caused by a bomb.
Sisi’s visit is his
first to Britain since he led the Egyptian army’s overthrow of his
predecessor Mohamed Morsi and critics have accused Cameron of putting
trade interests above human rights.
They accuse Sisi of crushing
all opposition in Egypt and jailing thousands of people, from Muslim
Brotherhood supporters to secularists and leftists.
In a sign of the Egyptian regime’s increasingly
totalitarian nature, a Cairo court today passed sentences ranging from
seven to ten years in prison on Al-Jazeera journalists Peter Greste,
Mohamed Adel Fahmy and Baher Mohamed, who have already been held for
more than 160 days.
“Not content with criminalizing all political
opposition, the Egyptian authorities are pursuing a policy of gagging
news media that try to offer a different take on reality from the
government’s,” Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Christophe Deloire said. “We point out that such arrests and arbitrary convictions violate the provisions of the new constitution, especially article 71.”
Mohamed Adel Fahmy, Al-Jazeera’s Cairo bureau chief, who has Canadian and Egyptian dual nationality, and Peter Greste, an Australian reporter, were given seven-year terms on charges of "broadcasting false reports" with the aim of supporting the Islamist movement and harming Egypt’s image.
Baher Mohamed,
who is Egyptian, received the same sentence plus an extra three-year
jail term on additional charges, giving him a combined sentence of ten
years in prison.
Of the six other detained defendants, four were
sentenced to seven years in prison and two were acquitted. Eleven other
defendants who were tried in absentia –including two British journalists
and a Dutch journalist – were given ten-year jail terms.
The 16 Egyptian defendants were accused of membership of a “terrorist organization”
(the Muslim Brotherhood) and of trying to harm Egypt’s image. The four
foreign journalists were accused to trying to support Muslim Brotherhood
by means of false reports.
Background
Journalists continue to be subject to arbitrary arrest in Egypt although the new constitution guarantees freedom of expression and opinion (article 65), media freedom (article 70) and media independence (article 72).
The government established after President Mohammed
Morsi’s removal in July 2013 has systematically persecuted media
regarded as sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood. Al-Jazeera has
been one of the leading targets of this anti-Brotherhood witch-hunt,
with the authorities closing its offices and arresting its journalists
arbitrarily.
The campaign was intensified after the government’s
decision on 25 December to add the Muslim Brotherhood to its list of
terrorist organizations. It is now prohibited for journalists to possess
or disseminate Muslim Brotherhood statements or recordings.
The extreme polarization of the Egyptian media (between
those that support and those that oppose Morsi) is reinforcing the
polarization of Egyptian society as a whole. As seen again during the
recent election campaign, many media are overtly supporting the current
government and, as a result, failing to play their watchdog role.
A total of six journalists have been killed by live
rounds since 3 July 2013. Most were killed while covering pro-Morsi
demonstrations. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), more than 65 journalists were arrested for varying periods of time between 3 July and 30 April.
In a recent open letter,
Reporters Without Borders urged Egypt’s new ruler, President Abdel
Fattah Al-Sisi, to act as a guarantor of freedom of the media and
information and to release all detained journalists.
Egypt is ranked 159th out of 180 countries in the 2014 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index.
Army general announces discovery of a wand that can cure disease using same
technology as fake bomb detector
February 27, 2014
Richard Spencer
A controversial Egyptian army decision to back a "detection" device
for HIV and Hepatitis C based on a bomb detector revives a Middle East scam
that saw a British man jailed for 10 years last year.
A wand has, according to army doctors, also shown almost miraculous success
rates in diagnosing patients without the need for a blood sample.
However, international experts say contraptions attached to television aerials
have been sold as bomb detectors and drugs detectors around the world. Most
recently, a British businessman, James McCormick, was jailed for 10 years
last year for selling £50 million worth of fake "ADE651"
detectors to Iraq.
"This is a scam that has reared its head for two decades," said Dan
Kaszeta, a security consultant who has worked in the - real - explosive
detector industry. "The idea is that some very small amount of virus in
the blood stream is emitting enough energy to move the aerial, as if some
sort of magic waves is coming out of it."
While the country is divided over whether the military regime is brutal and
dictatorial, or the saviour of the nation, few wanted to believe that it was
abandoning the basic norms of modern science.
But when videos of the general's announcement started circulating online,
highlighting the involvement of kebabs made of kofta, or minced meat balls,
they became too difficult to ignore.
When the army at the weekend announced it had found an easy detection method
and almost foolproof cure for Aids, as well as hepatitis C, it was met
largely with an embarrassed silence.
It was not just that the "cure" had not been submitted to the usual
international specialist scrutiny, or a peer-reviewed academic journal, it
was that the head of the army medical service making the announcement seemed
to think this was not necessary or even desirable.
Egypt had no intention of handing the cure over to anyone else, particularly
the "international pharmaceutical mafia", one of his colleagues
commented.
“I conquered AIDS with the blessings of my Lord, glory to him, with a rate of
100 per cent," the general, Dr Ibrahim Abdel-Atti, said. He said he had
developed a method to break down the virus and feed it back into the body
where it would attack it.
“I take AIDS from the patient, and feed the patient on AIDS, I give it to him
as a kofta skewer to feed on,” he said. “I take the disease, and I give it
to him as food, and this is the top of scientific miracles.”
“And I conquered the ‘C,’” he went on, referring to hepatitis C, a major
scourge in Egypt which has the highest rate in the world.
The announcement has an added importance in that Field Marshal Abdulfattah
el-Sisi, the defence minister and regime strongman, was present at the
announcement, lending it his weight. His apparent willingness to attach his
name to a dubious scientific precedent before, as everyone expects,
declaring himself as a candidate for the presidency has worried those who
fear that he has too little experience of civilian matters to tackle Egypt's
myriad social and economic problems.
Among the critics was Dr Essam Heggy, the scientific adviser to the interim
president, Adly Mansour, who told a local newspaper the announcement was a "scientific
scandal". "An issue this sensitive, in my personal opinion, could
hurt the image of the state," he said.
Mr Kaszeta said he feared that as with the bomb detector version, which was
useless to prevent a wave of terrorist attacks in Iraq, the "Aids
detector" could also cost lives as it offered a false sense of hope and
security.
"The depths of human ignorance and craziness are effectively bottomless,"
he said. "Put things in pseudo-scientific language and come up with a
plausible bit of terminology and it will always pass a certain level of
scrutiny."
It sounds like a sick joke, but it is in fact the question being most avidly
asked in Egypt today: how do you cure Aids with a kebab?
CAIRO — Twenty journalists, including four foreigners, went on trial
Thursday in Egypt on charges of aiding a terrorist organization, but the
proceedings were quickly adjourned until March 5.
Only eight of the
defendants, including Australian reporter Peter Greste, stood before the
Giza governorate's criminal court. The rest remain at large and are
being tried in absentia.
Greste was joined in the defendants' cage by Egyptian Canadian news
producer Mohamed Fahmy and journalist Baher Mohamed. The trio, who were
arrested Dec. 29, work for Al Jazeera's English network. Al Jazeera was banned from broadcasting in Egypt last year by an Egyptian court.
Other foreign defendants
include two Britons and a Dutch freelancer, all of who managed to flee
the country before charges were filed against them on Jan. 29.
The charges include illegal broadcasting and joining or cooperating with the Muslim Brotherhood to falsify news in order to "give the appearance that Egypt is in a state of civil war" following the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi last July. The government has designated the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization.
If convicted, the defendants could face prison sentences ranging from five to 15 years.
The trial has been condemned by local and international rights
organizations as a sign that the right to dissent is rapidly eroding in
Egypt.
"Egyptian authorities in recent months have demonstrated almost zero
tolerance for any form of dissent, arresting and prosecuting
journalists, demonstrators, and academics for peacefully expressing
their views," Human Rights Watch said in a statement issued Thursday.
"Journalists should not have to risk years in an Egyptian prison for
doing their job," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director for the
rights group.
In the courthouse there were some emotional scenes as Fahmy promised
his fiancée a big wedding after his release and Greste told his brother
that he loves their family.
Fahmy told reporters that he has been denied medical treatment for a
shoulder he said he broke after being forced to sleep on the floor
during his 54-day-long detention.
European Union representatives and personnel from the Australian and Canadian embassies in Cairo attended the trial.
Lawyers and family members were hoping defendants could be released
on bail, but Judge Mohamed Nagui Shehata denied their request.
