Court: Hamas, Hezbullah, al-Qaeda freed Morsy from prison
An Egyptian court has asked Interpol to arrest the leaders of Hamas, Hezbullah and al-Qaeda, which allegedly planned a prison break in which 11,000 Egyptian prisoners escaped during the early days of the uprising against former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Those who escaped included the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood, including current Egyptian President Mohammed Morsy.
Essam El-Erian, Sobhi Saleh and Saad El-Katatni were among senior
Brotherhood leaders to escape alongside Morsi, who later became Egyptian
president, after unknown assailants stormed Wadi El-Natroun prison
during the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak in early 2011.
The court called on Interpol to arrest the leaders of Lebanese Shia
group Hezbollah, Palestinian group Hamas and Al-Qaeda in Sinai for their
alleged role in planning and executing the escape.
Thirty-four senior Brotherhood members – including Saad El-Katatni, the
leader of its political wing the Freedom and Justice Party – will also
be investigated for espionage.
Eleven thousand prisoners escaped and 13 died during the prison break.
At a press conference in Ismailiya shortly after the court hearing, the
FJP said the case was an attempt to "derail the revolution and serve
the counter-revolution."
The party will appeal the court ruling which it described as "absurd" and "highly politicised."
Eli Lake reports on deep concern in the United States that senior terrorists escaped from Egyptian jails over the last two weeks.
U.S. counterterrorism and intelligence officials say they are concerned about the fates of prisoners such as Shawky Salama Mostafa and Mohammed Hassan Mahmoud, two suspected leaders of Egyptian Islamic Jihad captured by U.S. forces in 1998 in Albania but sent to Egypt for trial. Human Rights Watch and other groups report the two men were tortured in Egyptian jails.
U.S. intelligence officials are also trying to locate Mohammed Omar Abdel-Rahman, the son of the “Blind Sheik,” Omar Abdel-Rahman, the mastermind of the failed 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. He was captured in Pakistan in 2003 but was eventually sent to Egypt.
Senior Egyptian officials have warned that senior jihadists may have escaped from prison in the midst of the popular uprising. Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Vice President Omar Suleiman said al Qaeda operatives and other terrorists are among those who have escaped.
Videos of prisoners escaping from Egyptian prisons
During the course of the Egyptian rioting, thousands of prisoners - 'Palestinian' terrorists, political prisoners and common criminals - have escaped from Egyptian prisons, with the consent, if not the active participation of the Egyptian authorities. Here are some videos of those prisoners describing their experiences and of some of the escapes themselves.
The following video details how 27-year-old Palestinian Hassan Wshah, along with several other hundred inmates, escaped Abu Zabaal prison in Cairo during the demonstrations. Wassa was serving a 10-year prison sentence for attempting to cross into Egypt from Gaza in order to carry out terror attacks against Israel. Wassa explains that the escape was assisted by inmates' families and that he returned to Gaza through a smuggling tunnel at the Rafah border crossing.
The video below explains how Hamas commander Ayman Nofal returned to his home in central Gaza after serving three years in the Abu Zabaal prison. Nofal was arrested in 2008 for planning to carry out terror attacks in Egypt. Nofal made his way to the Strip via underground tunnels in Rafah.
The next video shows inmates making their way over Abu Zabaal prison walls and onto a central street.
The next video shows the remains of an Egyptian prison where looters broke-in, set the prison on fire and released thousands of prisoners.
This clip, titled "Prisoners escape with the help of Egyptian police," shows prisoners fleeing an unidentified Egyptian prison. A man wearing dark clothing runs from cell to cell yelling "Come on! Go home! Immediately! Go home!" As the cells are opened, the inmates steal necessities and continue outside.
Notice all the women and children in this video.
This clip shows inmates escaping from an unidentified prison while Egyptian authorities stand-by without interfering.
Network providers have used so-called “deep packet inspection” (DPI) software for years in order to examine the bits of digital information, called packets, that make up an email or other transmission, in order to find spam, computer viruses, and other malicious code on their systems.
“Anything that comes through (an Internet protocol network), we can record. We can reconstruct all of their e-mails along with attachments, see what web pages they clicked on, we can reconstruct their [Voice Over Internet Protocol] calls," the Vice President of Marketing for the company, Steve Bannerman, told Wired Magazine.
Free Press claims the Egyptian government's alleged use of such technology to read messages and even track cellphone users via GPS coordinates and SMS messaging was an infraction of the protesters' human rights.
“What we are seeing in Egypt is a frightening example of how the power of technology can be abused,” Free Press Campaign Director Timothy Karr said.
“Commercial operators trafficking in Deep Packet Inspection technology to violate Internet users’ privacy is bad enough; in government hands, that same invasion of privacy can quickly lead to stark human rights violations,” Karr said, and demanded that “companies that profit from sales of this technology … be held to a higher standard.”
Kerr warned that such commercial software systems are “being used by regimes in Iran, China, Burma and others for far more suspicious, and possibly brutal, purposes.”
It's surprising that the US doesn't (apparently) restrict the export of this kind of technology.
The Republican Jewish Coalition has called on J Street, the pro-Israel, pro-peacepro-Obama lobby, to return moneys that it received on the sly from Israel-hating billionaire George Soros (Hat Tip: Jennifer Rubin).
The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) today called on J Street to give back the "secret" money it has received from George Soros, whose virulent anti-Israel bias can no longer be ignored.
In an op-ed piece in yesterday's Washington Post concerning the upheaval in Egypt and the U.S. response, George Soros wrote that "The main stumbling block is Israel."
RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks said:
Only the most obsessed opponents of Israel could weave Israel into the unfolding turmoil in Egypt. It is outrageous to lay responsibility for future peace and stability in Egypt on the doorstep of Israel, as Soros does by calling Israel the "main stumbling block".
J Street knew about the radical anti-Israel positions of George Soros when he began funding that organization. J Street leaders repeatedly lied to hide Soros' involvement, in order to avoid the inevitable backlash from the vast majority of the Jewish community.
J Street has consistently shown itself to be outside the mainstream of the American Jewish community and far from what our community understands as "pro-Israel". But even for them, Soros' unrelenting and destructive obsession with Israel can no longer be ignored.
J Street must immediately return the money it received from George Soros and renounce all connection with him.
Imagine if those Israel bashers, during all the years they put Israel under their critical and hypocritical microscope, had taken Israel’s imperfect democratic experiment and said to the Arab world: Why don’t you try to emulate the Jews?
Why don’t you give equal rights to your women and gays, just like Israel does?
Why don’t you give your people the same freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom to vote that Israel gives its people? And offer them the economic opportunities they would get in Israel? Why don’t you treat your Jewish citizens the same way Israel treats its Arab citizens?
Why don’t you study how Israel has struggled to balance religion with democracy — a very difficult but not insurmountable task?
Why don’t you teach your people that Jews are not the sons of dogs, but a noble, ancient people with a 3,000-year connection to the land of Israel?
Yes, imagine if Israel bashers had spent a fraction of their energy fighting the lies of Arab dictators and defending the rights of millions of oppressed Arabs. Imagine if President Obama had taken 1 percent of the time he has harped on Jewish settlements to defend the democratic rights of Egyptian Arabs — which he is suddenly doing now that the volcano has erupted.
Maybe it’s just easier to beat up on a free and open society like Israel.
Greta van Sustern interviews three Egyptian protesters
Here's a fascinating interview that Fox News' Greta van Sustern conducted via Skype with three Egyptian protesters.
Let's go to the videotape.
I don't know about the rest of you but I was kind of surprised about the extent to which they seemed willing to accept putting Omar Suleiman in charge - at least temporarily.
For those of you who are wondering what happened to the Sandmonkey on Thursday night, this sounds a lot more serious than what was previously reported.
A Cairo-based blogger whose site was yanked down by the government said he was stopped by "pro-Mubarak goons" while trying to deliver medical supplies as the police took away his car keys and phone, letting crowds attack the group of people he was with and destroy his car.
"I was beaten in my face, scratched. There was glass everywhere from all the glass they shattered," said Mahmoud Salem, 29, who writes the blog Sandmonkey.org.
Salem was traveling with two other men and two women Thursday afternoon in a Kia Sorrento.
"The Cops took away my key and phone and had us stay in the car when people gathered around us, people were walking on top of the car, breaking off the side view mirror, throwing it to break other windows, kicking the car on all sides," Salem said. "We were there for 35 minutes while I was begging police to save the car, or let us leave because the girls were terrified. People were grabbing rope and telling us they would lynch us. It was a horrific experience."
The group was then taken to a police station where they waited for about two hours before being released. No police reports were filed. He was never given back his phone, but he was given back the car's front license plate - the only thing left of it after it was destroyed by the angry crowds.
The Wall Street Journal tells the fascinating story of how Egypt's mobile phone carriers were forced this past week to shut down and then to send out pro-government SMS's.
Vodafone entered Egypt in the late 1990s and India in 2007, pleasing many investors by seeking growth opportunities outside the European market.Now, the political risks in both countries have turned ugly: Vodafone has taken billions in write-downs on its India investment, in part due to regulatory issues and a costly tax dispute with the government. In Egypt, the company is scrambling to protect its infrastructure and employees—while delivering the Egyptian army's messages.
"When armed police arrive at your offices there is not much one can do," France Télécom Chief Executive Stephane Richard said on the sidelines of a press conference Thursday, when asked about last week's decision to sever access to all of its services. Mr. Richard said a clause in the company's Egyptian mobile-phone license allows the government to shut down mobile services in the country.
Earlier this week, Vodafone said in a statement that there were "no legal or practical options" open but to comply with the demand to shut off its mobile services.
Both carriers registered their dissatisfaction with the pro-government texts on Thursday. "France Télécom strongly disapproves of any message of a political nature that runs against the neutrality principle which defines our role as a network operator," the company said in a statement. Vodafone said it had "protested to the authorities that the current situation regarding these messages is unacceptable."
...
Research In Motion Ltd. has been under pressure from several governments, especially in the Middle East and Asia, to provide access to the secure networks used by its popular Blackberry device. Last year's decision by Google Inc. to leave China because of search-engine censorship marked a rare case of a multinational company forsaking a business opportunity because of political factors.
Telecom companies face particularly acute risks when dealing with governments in countries where they rely on state-owned infrastructure or state-awarded spectrum contracts for their business.In Egypt, operators often depend on Telecom Egypt's fixed-line infrastructure to carry their mobile services. They also usually employ hundreds of people.
"What is happening in Egypt just goes to show the leverage that governments have over telecom providers," said Cynthia Wong, the director of the Global Internet Freedom project at the Center of Democracy and Technology in Washington. "They can get these companies to do what they want because of the number of employees in the country and the amount of infrastructure in place."
Paradoxically, Google was able to shut down in China because it dominates the World market. Were Vodaphone and France 2 to leave Egypt, there are too many other countries who would be willing to take their place. That and the need for infrastructure allows local governments to dictate their own terms in these matters.
Food and supplies are being smuggled into Egypt from the 'impoverished' Gaza Strip.
According to the paper, which supports Hizbullah, traders in control of the tunnels have "been working for days" smuggling bread and food in the "opposite direction" - from Gaza into Egypt – because of "supply disruptions" from Cairo to the Sinai.
The paper acknowledged something that Israel has been arguing for months, that "Gaza's markets are no longer experiencing a shortage in most food" products since Israel eased the blockade of the region in June.
The smuggling out of Gaza does not impact on the supplies inside the Strip, those running the tunnels were quoted as saying.
This is not the first time the tunnels have been used to smuggle goods into Egypt, with western officials having said in the Fall that Israeli products, specifically fruits and vegetables, were making their way through the tunnels to Egyptian markets.
For those wondering what happened to the Sandmonkey.
Events in Egypt are moving fast—and deteriorating faster. Here is the text of a post by Sandmonkey, the leading Egyptian blogger, who was arrested today, beaten, and then released. He recently tweets: “I am ok. I got out. I was ambushed & beaten by the police, my phone confiscated , my car ripped apar& supplies taken. will tell the story later . Thank you all. I just need to rest now. I am humbled by you all. Thank you so much. I am trying to get a decent computer to write it all. Please don’t respond to my phone or BBM. This isn’t me. My phone was confiscated by a thug of an officer who insults those who call.” The link to his blog may not work if the Government of Egypt has cut it off. [Also, here’s the transcript of a live chat on the subject of events in Egypt I did recently at the Washington Post.]
Fear is the main answer: fear that Mubarak will be followed by the Muslim Brotherhood immediately or after a few months or years. This fear is reasonable, for none of us can possibly know what the future holds for Egypt. The cold peace that Mubarak supported with Israel is certainly far better than war.
But Mubarak has ruled Egypt for 30 years and has failed totally to crush the Brotherhood. In fact as he leaves the stage it is united and powerful, while the moderate and centrist forces are in disarray. Why? Hosni Mubarak, who has for all those years crushed the moderate opposition. He prevented the formation of moderate (including moderate Islamic) parties, jailed moderate opponents (like Ayman Nour), and allowed the Brotherhood to thrive underground. The Israelis apparently do not see the irony that they are mourning the departure of the man who created the very situation they now fear.
Mubarak is 82 and would soon have left the stage anyway. His insistence on staying, his theft of last November’s elections, and his flirting with the idea of setting his son upon the throne have led Egypt to its present crisis. Now he has said that he won’t run in Egypt’s scheduled presidential elections in September. Too late. Had he done that even a month ago Egypt would have been spared this uprising and a smooth transition would have been possible. Now the crowds demand that he leave instantly, and the idea that this man will preside over the transition to free elections will strike them as grotesque—which it is.
It’s a sad ending to Mubarak’s long career. It could have been avoided. But the Israeli reaction of wishing he would stay on—thirty-five years? forty?—shows a deep misunderstanding of the situation in Egypt.
Israel should keep quiet about this. The more we support Mubarak, the more we turn his people against him and the more we drive them into the waiting arms of the Muslim Brotherhood. But the US - as it did in Lebanon - needs to come out and say that although the Egyptian people can do whatever they please, if the Muslim Brotherhood gains control or plays a significant role in the next Egyptian government, they can kiss their American aid goodbye.
The Facebook page "We Are All Khaled Sa'id," which has played a key role in organizing the mass protests in Egypt since they began several days ago, has posted new instructions for the demonstrators: to focus on the demand for Mubarak's resignation; to march towards the presidential palaces, wearing uniform dress, chanting uniform slogans, and beating drums; not to fear the military and to call for its deployment throughout Egypt; not to trust reports on Egyptian TV, and to storm its headquarters; to provide the media with footage of government terrorism; to call for intervention by human rights organizations and the Arab League; to demonstrate unity between Muslims and Copts; not to show loyalty to the Muslim Brotherhood, and to beware the police which are deployed everywhere, including in plainclothes.
Interesting that they're being told not to show loyalty to the Muslim Brotherhood. I've heard that from a few sources. But the concern here is that the Brotherhood hijacks the protests anyway, as happened in 1978-79 in Iran.
One thing should be clear: They are not going to leave Mubarak in power. The question is who will replace him.
After an entire weekend where we're told that Israel is keeping a low profile and not taking sides, Haaretz comes out with this in the Monday morning paper.
Israeli officials are keeping a low profile on the events in Egypt, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even ordering cabinet members to avoid commenting publicly on the issue.
Senior Israeli officials, however, said that on Saturday night the Foreign Ministry issued a directive to around a dozen key embassies in the United States, Canada, China, Russia and several European countries. The ambassadors were told to stress to their host countries the importance of Egypt's stability. In a special cable, they were told to get this word out as soon as possible.
EU foreign ministers are to discuss the situation in Egypt at a special session today in Brussels, after which they are expected to issue a statement echoing those issued in recent days by U.S. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Obama called on Mubarak to take "concrete steps" toward democratic reforms and to refrain from violence against peaceful protesters, sentiments echoed in a statement Saturday night by the leaders of Britain, France and Germany.
"The Americans and the Europeans are being pulled along by public opinion and aren't considering their genuine interests," one senior Israeli official said. "Even if they are critical of Mubarak they have to make their friends feel that they're not alone. Jordan and Saudi Arabia see the reactions in the West, how everyone is abandoning Mubarak, and this will have very serious implications."
Sorry, but no. Our interest is not Mubarak's survival - we should be neutral on that question.
Our interest should that if Mubarak is replaced, he should be replaced by a pro-Western government that will continue to abide by the Camp David treaty. The more we open our mouths to save Mubarak, the more likely we go down with Mubarak and the treaty goes down with him. That leaves us with an enemy on our southern flank who is much stronger than in 1967 or 1973, and we'd be starting from the 1949 armistice lines. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Internationally, it more is a matter of neglect and disregard, rather than a causal connection.
Having prostrated the United States before the world in the first months of his administration, and then having largely abandoned that world while focusing on Obamacare, we have watched a de facto Iranian takeover of Lebanon via Hezbollah, and a spread of Iranian and Islamist influence. It remains to be seen in which direction the Egyptian crisis moves, but all signs point to creater instability in the region and greater influence of Islamists.
The administration's complete obsession with Obamacare has had intended and unintended consequences, only some of which presently are known.
Update: Yes, I know, not all of the foreign policy has been neglectful. The Obama administration was quite active in supporting the Hugo Chavez-wannabee who tried to make himself president-for-life over the objections of the Honduran people, and in publicly scolding the Israelis for the lack of progress in peace talks.
Meanwhile, Jim Hoft reports that while Egypt burned on Saturday, Obama spent the day watching basketball and partying.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
