2004

In the midst of dramatic regional events, from the brutal fighting in Falujja to the passing away of the legendary Yasser Arafat, a curious incident took place in the dawn hours of November 3rd, to grab the attention of many Egyptians away from these big events. An outspoken opposition paper’s executive editor, Abdel Halim Kandil, was overpowered by four strongmen at gun-point, blindfolded, hand-cuffed, taken away in a car to a desert spot outside Cairo. He was stripped naked, badly beaten and thrown out in the desert to fend for himself, back to civilization. As the four thugs were rotating in assaulting him, Kandil later told the Egyptian Police, they were shouting a repeated warning never to criticize his uppers again. Guided by distant car lights moving in the horizon, Kandil dragged himself to a high-way that turned out to be the Cairo-Suez Road, on which he traveled, naked and wounded till he hit a military check point. The soldiers took pity on him, gave him a uniform to wear, and called his worried family, which swiftly drove over some 30 miles from the opposite end of town to collect the hapless chap.

When the story broke out, the Egyptian press community went into a rage. Fingers pointed at various and all levels of the Egyptian Establishment. Tacit red lines, around the Presidential Family and generally respected by all for years, were trodden on as never before, not only by Kandil’s newspaper, “El-Araby”, but by many others as well. At issue as many observers noted was Kandil’s sustained forceful objection to the elaborate machination in grooming young Gamal Mubarak, to succeed his ailing 77 years old father, Hosny. To be sure, Kandil was not the only or even the first to blow the whistle on this Syrian–style ploy. As a matter of fact it was this very author who first did some five years earlier; and paid for it then with few years in prison after a series of high profile trials (2000-2003). My final acquittal by Egypt’s Highest Court of Cassation with a tacit indictment of the State Security Agency (SSA) for having fabricated the case against me and 27 of my research associates, in what came to be known as the Ibn Khaldun Center’s Trial.

Shortly after, the Mubarak regime seemed to have dropped this method of drummed-up charges and mock trials against its opponents. More clandestine methods were to be used i.e. mafia style. On August 13, 2003, the deputy chief-editor of the Egyptian daily Al Ahram, Redha Hillal, was reported missing, as he was coerced from his home in a Cairo suburb. A year and three months later, the authorities have not been able to resolve what Amnesty International calls the “forced disappearance” of Redha Hillal. The Kandil and Hillal cases have opened a Pandora’s Box. Tens of other coerced disappearances, but of less well-known persons, began to be reported by their relatives. Now, it is widely rumored that a special secret dirty hit-and-run unit is operating out of the Presidential Palace. As time passes without solving these and similar mysteries, the rumor acquires more credence.

President Mubarak is now under attack. A popular campaign is gathering steam with simple slogans: NO To MUBARAK, NO To His SON GAMAL. All the previous red lines are turning orange, even in the state-controlled media and dark black in the opposition papers. All of a sudden, Egypt does not seem to be any more a Republic of Fear.