WIAM EL-TAMAMI 28 JANUARY 2015 I left Cairo on 19 April 2014. I was so glad to have left, so relieved and slightly disbelieving that I had finally loosened myself from the grip of Al-Qaahira – in Arabic the name, quite fittingly, means ‘The Oppressor’, ‘The Crusher’, ‘The Vanquisheress’.
I knew that I could not be there then, but that I was inextricably bound to her: I could, I would, always come back.
In this Thursday, Dec. 4, 2014 photo, Egyptian lawyer Ragia Omran speaks on her mobile phone after a trial session of activists facing charges on organizing unauthorized protests, at a courtroom in Cairo, Egypt. Each time a group of activists is arrested in Egypt, the call for help goes most often to Omran. She then starts a long trek through police stations and prosecutors' offices, trying to get their release or at least some respect for their rights.
OCTOBER 28, 2014 Sharif Abdel Kouddous عربي In a bid to stamp out any last vestiges of revolutionary fervor and hold at bay the threat of collective empowerment, the Sisi regime has taken concrete steps to quash dissent, silence opposition voices, and consolidate control over the body politic. Under the guise of a war on terror and restoring “stability,” President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has enshrined unprecedented authoritarian measures into law.
Omar Robert Hamilton London Review of Books Vol. 36 No 19 · 9 October 2014 page 30 | 1717 words After the shock and awe tactics of the Rabaa massacre last summer, when Egypt’s military regime murdered around a thousand supporters of the deposed president, Mohamed Morsi, the rolling counter-revolution has played out mostly within the justice system, between police stations, prisons and courtrooms. The system is self-contained and unaccountable: graduates of the Police Academy are automatically granted a law degree and can move fluidly from police station to prosecutor’s office to judge’s bench.
Alaa Abd El Fattah with his wife and intellectual partner, Manal Hassan. Photo by Lilian Wagdy via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0) 22 August 2014 Written by Nani Jansen and Adrian Plevin. After imprisoned Egyptian blogger and human rights defender Alaa Abd El Fattah went on hunger strike this past Monday, the Media Legal Defence Initiative (MLDI) and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) petitioned the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) to take all necessary steps to secure Abd El Fattah’s immediate release.
Shadee Ashtari Posted: 01/07/2014 5:04 pm EST Updated: 01/23/2014 10:53 am EST "It is forbidden to read or write, and entering a pen and paper to the political prisoners is more difficult than smuggling in drugs, and whoever is caught with a pen or paper is tortured along with all those with him," reads the Dec. 3 letter, smuggled out of Egypt’s notorious Tora Prison. "I met with some of the most famous and important figures of Europe, America, India, Korea and Turkey .
