Egyptian Secret Police Taking Journalists
by kck Sat Feb 05, 2011
Neither freedom nor democracy can exist without a functioning press.
An illustration of what the Egyptian uprising is all about.
Two NYT journalists, Souad Mekhennet, Nicholas Kulish, and their driver were stopped at a civilian checkpoint as they were trying to drive into Cairo Thursday. They were detained for 24 hours. Stopped, searched, seized into custody because they were journalists sending pictures and bearing witness, beginning a frightening and uncertain detention.
Please read this whole NYT account.
We had been detained by Egyptian authorities, handed over to the country’s dreaded Mukhabarat, the secret police, and interrogated. They left us all night in a cold room, on hard orange plastic stools, under fluorescent lights.
But our discomfort paled in comparison to the dull whacks and the screams of pain by Egyptian people that broke the stillness of the night. In one instance, between the cries of suffering, an officer said in Arabic, "You are talking to journalists? You are talking badly about your country?"
A voice, also in Arabic, answered: "You are committing a sin. You are committing a sin."
Yesterday news of the first journalist in Cairo killed was published. Ahmed Mohammed Mahmoud, 36, was shot by a sniper as he stood on his balcony photographing Egyptian security forces confronting protesters.
Foreign and Egyptian journalists, photographers, and news staff have been detained, stripped of their equipment, stabbed, beaten, blindfolded and detained. Still, the news reports, video, and phoned in blog posts spread the word. It's as if the uprising is globalized. Courageous journalists enabling and honoring courageous Egyptians and creating a sphere of support and enthusiasm for their demands.
The free flow of information is the enemy of tyranny.
...we were driven to a military base. The military had been the closest thing Egypt had to a guarantor of stability and we thought once we explained who we were and provided documentation we would be allowed to go to our hotel.
In a strange exchange that only made sense later, Ms. Mekhennet asked a soldier, "Where are you taking us?" The soldier answered: "My heart goes out to you. I’m sorry."
After driving to several more bases we were told we were being handed over to the Mukhabarat at their headquarters in Nasr City...
The Mukhabarat is Egypt's intelligence service run since 1993 by Omar Suleiman, until his reassignment this week.
The Mukhabarat has had a working relationship with American intelligence, including the C.I.A.’s so-called rendition program of prison transfers. During our questioning, a man nearby was being beaten — the sickening sound somewhere between a thud and a thwack. Between his screams someone yelled in Arabic, "You’re a traitor working with foreigners."
Souad Mekhennet is familiar with intelligence agencies and their use of rendition and torture. It was she who broke the story in the NYT about the German citizen, Khaled el-Masri, mistakenly dragged into a nightmare of rendition and torture all because his name was similar to an Al-Qaeda operative. Mr. el-Masri was kidnapped by the United States while on vacation in Yugoslavia, transported to a prison in Afghanistan, and tortured by the CIA. We can only imagine Souad Mekhennet's thoughts and calculations while detained as she saw blindfolded colleagues tied up and pleading for help, hearing the screams and cries of beatings throughout the night.
What a story. Bone-chilling. Takes my breadth away. The so far relentless demands from the streets for these murderous enemies of free people with armies of thuggish mercenaries to go now. Courageous journalists and witnesses are real and important parts to this uprising. In fact, hopes for democracy anywhere and everywhere depend on a free functioning press. We all owe them our gratitude and support
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