Freed Egyptian Protester Describes Ordeal, but Fate of Seized Blogger Is Unknown

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN FEB. 11, 2009, The New York Times CAIRO — For more than four straight days, Philip Rizk said, he was blindfolded, handcuffed and interrogated around the clock by Egyptian state security agents who abducted him on Friday after he took part in a march in support of Gaza. Early Wednesday morning, with neither warning nor explanation, he was

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Those who believe in freedom: Yara Sallam

Open Democracy NELLY BASSILY 23 July 2015 Yara Sallam is starting the second year of her sentence in Qanater Women’s prison outside Cairo. She says, “I do not feel any regret or self-defeat, the prison is not inside me.”   Yara Sallam is starting her second year of detention in an Egyptian prison. No mother ever wants to see her child in

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Angels caught in a tightening noose

By Soraya Morayef Open Democracy, 13 November 2013 Many disregard the recurrent stories of prison deaths, police torture and rape because – on the other hand – Egypt’s streets are empty after curfew and the walls are freshly painted; surely a clear indication that the state has succeeded in restoring security and defeating terrorism. On Tuesday November 5, Egypt’s Minister

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Deaths without dignity

21 August 2013, Mada Masr By Sherief Gaber   “You want to see the bodies? Ok then, here!” the man working at the morgue said, holding me and a friend by the arm and practically pushing us into a humid room filled with bodies, lying on slabs or on the floor and in various states of decay. We had been

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Human rights in focus: A series of conversations

Tuesday, April 14, 2015 – 13:42 By: Mai Shams El-Din, Mada Masr اقرأها بالعربية This is an introduction to a series of interviews by Mada Masr with human rights workers in Egypt that attempts to situate the struggle for rights within the context of a larger movement and the contest over political space. Many human rights workers have felt targeted by the

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The prison in us

Alia Mossallam  Mada Masr, Wednesday, September 17, 2014 About a month ago I went to visit a friend in prison. It doesn’t matter who he or she was, since there are now hundreds of young men and women in Egypt’s prisons because of the new Protest Law. The prisons are full to the brim with teenagers, students, fathers, brothers, daughters and

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Unauthorized memory

Sunday, January 25, 2015 Yasmin El-Rifae   Yesterday they shot and killed a woman on Talaat Harb Street. She was walking, along with other members of the Socialist Alliance Party, through downtown to commemorate those killed since all of this started four years ago. Many of them were carrying flowers, wreaths to lay in Tahrir. Photos of Shaimaa Sabbagh in

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A lonely fight defending Egypt's jailed dissidents

By HAMZA HENDAWIPublished: Dec 14, 2014 CAIRO (AP) – When a group of activists is arrested in Egypt, the call for help goes most often to lawyer Ragia 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. It’s a lonely, grueling struggle, and

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On Hunger Strike

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,

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