Welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our next guest is Ahmed Elassi.
He is an Egyptian revolutionary.
Welcome back to the show.
Hi, Scott.
Thanks.
Very happy to have you here.
So, looks like bad news in McClatchy newspapers.
Egypt's army drives protesters from Cairo Square.
Can you give us the latest?
This is from yesterday.
Sure.
Let me just give you a little bit of background.
Basically, about a month ago, there were about several families, I guess like several hundred from the families of the martyrs that were killed on and during the initial stage of the revolution.
And basically, they were camped out in front of the television station, the state-owned television station, when they heard that there is a special ceremony that is basically dedicated to the parents of the martyrs in a nearby theater.
So, they headed down to the theater only to find out that it was actually for the police officers who basically died during the revolution, whom a lot of them were actually partaking in the massive killing of protesters.
You know, over a thousand Egyptians were killed deliberately during the 18 days.
And basically, when the families heard this, they were very upset.
They headed down there.
They found this out.
So, there was a bit of a clash.
Some of the officers that were there hired some thugs to come and beat the martyrs' families.
And then arrested them and took them down to headquarters, which is the Ministry of Interior.
Of course, when everybody heard this, you know, things nowadays are a lot more accessible.
Like, the actual incidences were recorded by a lot of people on their camera, their mobile phone cameras, and uploaded to YouTube and linked to Twitter and stuff like that on Facebook.
So, it wasn't long before most people found out.
I, myself, headed down to Tahrir Square.
And it was like, you know, back again to the same sort of massive gas canisters.
You know, it is estimated that they spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $30,000 to $50,000 worth of tear gas alone that day.
And basically, ever since that day, people have been camped out in Tahrir Square.
The police finally retreated and they said they weren't going to attack people anymore.
And they made these outrageous claims that the protesters were thugs and that they were headed to burn down the ministry.
And basically, they sort of backtracked from that when all the photo evidence was basically in the newspapers and everywhere that showed all the people that were standing right alongside the police were holding knives, swords, and they were the ones that were the thugs that were beating on the protesters.
So, since then, there has been a lot of camped-out people that have been in the square and they've sort of locked off Tahrir Square for the past month or so.
And they were getting ready to leave right before that happened, right before yesterday's incident happened.
And as a matter of fact, they were just planning on having a couple more days until Mobotok's trial would start again because it was promised that Mobotok's trial would start tomorrow, August the 3rd, where it would take place in the police academy right on the outskirts of Cairo, where they would have a more manageable situation since it's their own thing.
They want to secure it, which is fine.
They want to make sure that there aren't any...
It's quite a hairy situation, and this is why the martyrs' families are protesting.
And the rest of the people are with them, of course.
And this is why they've been camped out, because they want to see justice.
They want to see these people pay for their crimes.
So, basically, tomorrow was supposed to be the day that they would release Tahrir Square and go about their business just because Mobotok was going to go on trial.
When the army and the central security forces basically moved in, they started hitting people with these batons.
I personally was not there last night when that started happening, but I think it started right around 6 local time, which is roughly about 45 minutes to 50 minutes before people were supposed to be breaking their fasting, and that was the plan that they were going to have breaking their fasting or have their meal right there in the square.
And that's when the army started moving in, tore down all of the tents that were in the square, and arbitrarily started arresting people.
Later on, they moved into the nearby mosque that was a religious building.
It has its own sanctity.
You shouldn't enter with your shoes.
There were reports of people entering, like the police and army, were entering with their shoes and guns and arresting people inside.
And that was basically the sort of...
Then there was a little bit of a retreat.
They just secured the square, opened up the road leading to the square because it is sort of a very important traffic area where a lot of Cairo's traffic and Giza, which are the two governments, think about them as like two separate counties that sort of meet up right there in Tahrir.
So it is kind of a...
It makes life a little bit difficult when Tahrir Square is closed down, which does not necessarily mean that you should take protesters out by force.
It means you should see what their requests are, especially since they're reasonable, and get them done.
Well, now, in this McClatchy story, they say that that's what the army said, was that they only did this because they got to open up traffic.
But does that seem like a pretext to you, or that was really what they were doing this for?
Why they broke this protest up, and with force?
It says here they were...
Well, it looks like almost 200 people have been detained.
Right.
I mean, it is a cover, obviously.
I mean, yes, it does make life difficult for most people, but I mean, I myself would not mind, you know, having to take an extra 10, 15 minutes, or even half an hour in traffic, if it meant that I get justice as a citizen.
All right, well, I'm sorry, we've got to hold it here and go out to this break, but we'll get more about the Egyptian revolution still in progress from Imad El-Assi, right after this.
It's Antiwar Radio.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
I'm Scott Horton, and on the line is Imad El-Assi, Egyptian-American, on the line from Cairo.
He's been participating in and observing this Egyptian spring and summer, now, this revolution.
And, you know, there's so much to cover in so little time, I want Imad to let you get in a word about what's going on in the Gaza Strip and the Rafah border crossing toward the end of the segment here.
But I wonder, you know, I want to ask you, you described the background and the recent events pretty well there in the first segment about the protesters going back to Tahrir Square and then getting forced out yesterday by the army.
And you said you thought that clearing the space for traffic was a pretext, and I wonder whether you think, which, you know, depending on what you're hearing, I guess, what you know of the rest of the revolutionaries' opinions, people, you know, it was certainly at the beginning that it was, yay, the army's taking our side against the secret police and the dictator's hitmen.
But now the army's all that's left, and it seems like they're not too hesitant about cracking skulls, you know, in order to get their ends accomplished.
And I just wonder whether the revolutionaries' opinion of the military has changed.
I read also they said they're postponing the elections from September until they won't say when.
And I wonder, you know, how sour this revolution is turning out with just this ruling military council taking over the thing.
Sure.
I mean, basically the public opinion of the SCAF or the Supreme Council of Armed Forces is slowly being, you know, people are slowly becoming more and more disillusioned with what's going on.
There are trials that have been taking place ever since March, you know, since early, as far as March, you've had people who were revolutionaries and protesters that were getting military trials and getting sentenced to three to 20 years in prison, yet the true criminals who carried out these atrocious crimes against the Egyptian people are being sort of, you know, given all of these breaks, including, like, a lot of the police officers who actually carried out and gave orders to fire upon protesters were basically given promotion.
They were given, you know, they rose through the ranks, which is absolutely unbelievable.
There has been a massive purge of a lot of the documents in various ministries to sort of, like, get rid of evidence so that these people wouldn't get tried.
And the people are, you know, worried that this is not what's going on.
This isn't what, you know, that the army isn't truly on their side.
And by army, I mean the SCAF, because the army is, you know, it's Egyptians.
Mid-ranking officers are of the people, but they have to follow orders.
Unfortunately, the SCAF or the ruling military, they're like 19 high-ranking officers that are basically running the country.
And unfortunately, they're being very slow with carrying out these trials for the true criminals.
And at the same time, they're giving military trials to innocent people.
Some of these, by the way, some of these people were, like, personal friends of mine, one of which is a journalist that wrote about some of these things in an article.
And basically, she got, like, 10 years in prison because she— and it's sort of—it hasn't been implemented yet.
So it's like, be quiet or else we're going to implement the 10 years and put you behind bars.
And she got the sentence basically within half an hour.
Other people also got, like, 3 to 10 years in prison within 15 minutes.
How is that going to be a fair trial?
They claim that they have—you know, that this is a lawful process, but it's not.
It's circumventing the judicial system, the Egyptian judicial system.
And it's absolutely unacceptable.
A lot of people, a lot of the political— Well, I wonder, you know, Ahmed, do you think that there's any hope that you could have American-style democracy where you have regular elections and somewhat fair trials for the little people?
Of course, never trials for the powerful who abuse rights.
You know, that's pie in the sky to this Texan's ears.
But what about—are they going to let you elect a real parliament, not some puppet ridiculous thing like under the Mubarak era?
Or is there going to be anything like a real representative government where then maybe you could finally get some accountability that way, you know?
I mean, I sure hope so.
And I was just about to say that the political powers that are— whether it be the Muslim Brotherhood or the various other Muslim— you have several different Muslim parties, and you have some liberal parties, and all of these political powers that be right now that are, you know, in their infancy almost, are really trying to push for serious change.
And they were really upset when they heard that there's going to be a postponement of the elections.
And basically what was said is that the elections themselves aren't going to be postponed, but the process of the elections is going to take longer than usual because they have to be sort of watched over by the judicial system, and there aren't enough judges to watch all of the circuits.
So what they're going to do is break it up into three different stages, and basically—because that's how many judges are available.
And that process is going to take longer.
They're going to start in the end of September, but when they're actually going to hold elections most likely will not be until late November, which is a bit of a problem.
And if that—what we want is democracy.
What we want is, you know, the voice of the people to be heard.
We want transparency in government.
We want transparency in the election process.
And frankly, if that doesn't happen, I mean, we might have a serious problem.
We might have—you know, the people have shed their fears.
They are not going to take this laying down.
They're going to speak up and be quite vocal about it.
And I think last Friday was sort of a demonstration of the readiness and willingness of people to— you know, in extreme heat there were like 500 heat strokes that took place, but, I mean, there were still millions of people in the higher square.
Well, tell me this, Amanda.
Whatever happened to Omar Suleiman, the American empire's choice for Mubarak's replacement?
He's claiming that he stepped down and that he's not going to be running for president.
That's what he's claiming.
I really don't know.
There are several, by the way.
Is he out of power officially right now, or is he still over there at the secret police force?
He was running the intelligence general.
He was chief of general intelligence, which is the highest sort of intelligence apparatus, like the equivalent, I guess, of like NSA or Homeland Security in the United States.
And basically, we—officially, he's out of there.
Murad Muafi is his successor, but he's supposedly not working for the Egyptian government anymore.
However, though, I really don't think that he's completely out of the picture.
People like that are—like you said, he's the U.S. hot choice.
He has powerful friends from across the ocean is what he is.
Exactly.
And he's done their bidding.
He's given them false intelligence to go into Iraq war, and he's been doing their bidding for a while.
So, yes, he is a potential candidate still.
All right.
Now, I'm sorry, Amanda.
We're almost out of time.
I know you've been up to the Rafah border crossing.
Are things any easier up there since the last time we spoke?
No, it's actually not any easier, unfortunately.
We—last time we spoke, we were hoping that there's going to be a permanent opening of the Rafah border crossing, according to what the foreign minister, former foreign minister, Dr. Nabil al-Arabi, had said.
But he was removed since then.
Things are much tougher for the Palestinians in Gaza, and we're trying to bring them at least medical aid.
I'm sorry we have to leave it there, Ahmed.
But you know what?
Let me try to get you back later this week or next week to talk more about the Gaza Strip.
Sounds good.
Thanks very much.
Everybody, this is Ahmed El-Lassi.
Thank you.
See you all tomorrow.
