Video: Interview with Wael Ghonim (Egyptian opposition leader)
This is an interview on Egyptian television with Wael Ghonim, the manager of Google in the Arab countries (from the interview it's clear that he's an Egyptian who is now based in the UAE). It has English subtitles.Ghonim was arrested, held without charges and tortured for 12 days by the Egyptian authorities until Google got him released last Sunday. After his release, it came out that he was running the website that the people who started the demonstrations used for planning and recruitment purposes.
In the interview, he gets very emotional about all the people who were killed in the riots. In the end, he can't take it anymore, and he gets up and walks out of the interview.
I found myself feeling sorry for him and for his predicament. I can only hope and pray that he's right that the Muslim Brotherhood will not take control of what he and his comrades have started. But I'm very pessimistic on that score.
Let's go to the videotape.
Ouch.
Labels: Egyptian regime change, Google Arabia, Wael Ghonim
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:29 AM
6 Comments:
Didn't he say in this interview that he was not tortured or mistreated? Your post says he was "tortured". Did he say that? I think he said he had his eyes covered (well, I guess that would be miserable after a while), but that they didn't do anything to him. Of course, There was an article a while back saying that Google people were noticeably frequent visitors to the White House over the past two years. As was Code Pink, also among the agitators in this thing. I would like to know what President Obama knows about this attempted coup and when he knew it. Also, re the Gaza flotilla, which I understand will be repeated coming up. Are these people "attacking" our allies in the region?
Sunlight,
In the parts of this interview that we saw (it was edited), he didn't say he was tortured, but I follow several Arab journalists and they have all said he was tortured. I have no reason to doubt that.
I doubt Obama knew this was coming. His DNI is too stupid to have figured it out.
Most (99%) observers do not think the mass protests are an attempted coup--this is not an American left-wing Islamist conspiracy a la Glenn Beck--and the military have sided with Mubarak. Obama didn't expect the unexpected when he became President so doesn't have an intuition to cover home plate from unexpected fast balls and sliders.
His DNI may be ignorant (picked because of it?), but Obama is not... he knows EXACTLY what the set up is. I think we imperil our societies if we give Obama a pass as not knowing EXACTLY who he and his fellow travelers are backing.
BTW, I saw this video yesterday and this guy specifically said that his eyes were covered but that he was not harmed. I'll find that and put the link here.
Sunlight,
Now you have your coup--well, wherever it goes from here--the military just pitched in at the end to help along an exit demanded by most everyone else in country, not a plot organized by community organizers stateside or Code Pink or even George Soros....
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