Why Did Egypt Revolt?: The Facts Through the Fact Finders (Part III/Last Part)

The historic Report of the Fact-Finding Commission which was issued in Cairo at a press conference last month draws its importance from two factors:  It is a complete analysis of why people revolt, and it is done under the leadership of one of the most prestigious judicial authorities in the Arab world, Judge Adel Qura.

Part I of this series which ends with this Part III, dealt with the role of the media, Facebook, Twitter and other means of social mobilization.  This was followed by Part II which dealt with the role of the police and other security forces in regard to "Shooting with Live Ammunition and Death by Being Run-Over by Vehicles."  Now this Part III deals with 3 issues: (a) Thugs (Baltagiahs) intimidating peaceful protesters; (b) Extra judicial arrests; (c) Security break-down.

Taken in its totality, the Fact-Finders have unmistakeably placed the onus on the old regime for these gross infractions of constitutional rights of the Egyptian citizen to peacefully demonstrate.  The weight of evidence of all kinds, including visual evidence, is overwhelming.  The direct impact of that Report could be seen in the recent court of appeals ruling to retry Mubarak, his two sons and other suspects for their alleged commission, directly or indirectly, of actions whereby nearly 900 demonstrators were killed and more than 6000 were injured in various Egyptian provinces.

The Report of the Fact-Finding Commission covers the critical period from January 25 to February 11, 2011, with the latter day signaling the fall of Mubarak from his 32-year old position as Egypt's dictatorial President.

With regard to the thugs (Baltagiahs; quasi-militias), the Report focuses on the period from February 2, to February 3, 2011.  During those 24 hours, bloody confrontations took place all over Egypt.  The locales were Tahrir Square and its equivalents in many of the Egyptian Provinces.

The Report calls that Wednesday "Bloody Wednesday."  On that morning, the Mubarak regime supporters poured into Mustafa Mahmoud Square located at the Arab League Avenue.  Other supporters came from other Cairo quarters, thus swelling the numbers of counter-protesters. As per the testimony of some leaders of the National Party (the Governing Party), those activists were instructed to prevent the anti-Mubarak demonstrators from entering Tahrir Square.

How about the throngs of anti-Mubarak demonstrators who were already camped inside Tahrir?  The orders were to besiege the occupiers of Tahrir within whose ranks, elements of the secret Egyptian police were infiltrated to commit intimidation and anarchy.  But since that iconic public square is surrounded by high buildings, both business and residential, the anti-democracy infiltrators also ascended to rooftops.

To the anti-Mubarak elements, rooftops became the high ground from which they threw stones, marble tiles, and molotov cocktails on the heads of the unarmed demonstrators below.  Simultaneously, the Fact-Finders state, the police and thug elements within Tahrir Square used their guns, rubber bullets, and tear gas canisters in attacking the pro-democracy throngs.

The scene gets more horrific with the invasion by a group of riders of camels, horses, and mules, driving their animals at top speed into the packed crowds.  The Report goes on to describe those events which it calls "The Camel Battle" as the most frightening of all the other illegal acts committed by the fallen regime.  The riders of those animals, most of whom came from Nazlet El-Samman, near the Giza Pyramids, were armed with thick bamboo sticks, long knives, swords and iron bars.  They breached the iron barriers which were erected to protect the Tahrir occupiers, and proceeded to cause indiscriminate death and injury.

In self defence, the demonstrators ripped up street pavements and hurled their broken stones at their attackers.  During that melee, the demonstrators detained some of the camel riders and other infiltrators.  From their IDs they found that they were either police forces dressed in civilian clothes or were members of the National Democratic Party, the then-ruling party of former President Mubarak.  The detainees were delivered by their civilian captors to the armed forces with whom the Fact-Finders were in communication to document that important report.

The Fact-Finders also documented what was beamed by bullhorns.  The leaders of those anti-deomcracy throngs described the peaceful demonstrators as mercenaries, turncoats, traitors and non-thinking hordes who were misled by Dr. El-Baradei, Ayman Nour and other anti-dictatorship icons.  The anti-democracy throngs were urged, the Fact-Finders pointed out, to "liberate Tahrir Square from the traitors who want for Egypt only destruction."

The Report contained a copy of a document carrying the logo of the Interior Ministry under the heading: "Secret and Very Important."  The document, which is not yet authenticated, is said to contain orders "to hire Baltagiahs (thugs) to create chaos and to be generously paid."  That document was referred to Egypt's Attorney General for further investigation.

Dealing with the remaining issues, namely extra judicial arrests and the security breakdown in Egypt, the Fact-Finding Commission declared in its Report the following:

• The Police placed under arrest without legal cause many of the demonstrators and media personnel who were reporting on the events of those history-changing 18 days in early 2011. Those detainees were kept for varying periods at various detention centers.
• The security breakdown was brought about through the use by the Ministry of Interior of Baltagiahs who were activated in various areas of Cairo and Giza.  The regular police forces have left the scenes of these clashes between the thugs and the pro-democracy protesters  Thus the Baltagiahs were enabled to destroy public and private property, after committing acts of pillage.  Some of the police stations were reported to have been burnt by arsonists from within the ranks of those hired thugs.

All these findings by the Qura Fact-Finding Commission are now in the hands of Egypt's Attorney General.  Those occurrences shall no doubt be taken into account during the retrial of Mubarak and his crew in the months ahead.

January 25, 2013 marks the 2nd anniversary of the Egyptian Revolution.  Two years have already gone by.  Yet the revolutionary cataclysm and its reverberations are not yet over.  When would they be over?  Nobody knows!!  But barring interference by the army, the march towards freedom and democratic rule shall eventually be impossible to reverse.

Why Did Egypt Revolt?: The Facts Through the Fact Finders (Part II)

Mubarak and his crew are going to be retried again.  Either acquittal, which is not likely, or a stiffer sentence, which could be capital punishment.  The decision is a legal anomaly.  It subjects the defendant(s) to retrial for the same charges in which a legal decision was already rendered.  But revolutions are not known for adhering to recognizable legal procedures.

Mubarak, his two sons, his former interior minister and others associated with the fallen regime, are still facing charges including allowing their security forces and "baltagiahs" (thugs) to kill peaceful protestors.

The recent Report of the Fact-Finding Commission of the prestigious Egyptian jurist, Adel Qura, has found those charges to be credible.  The order of an Egyptian appeals court, issued on January 13, 2013, for a retrial reflects the seriousness in which the Qura report is held.

In Part I of this series on that report, this blog dealt with the role of the social media and public information in influencing the events of the first 18 days of the Egyptian Revolution (January 25 to February 11, 2011).  Now Part II deals with the issue of what the Commission describes as "Shooting with Live Ammunition and Death by Being Run-Over by Vehicles."

The Commission confirms that as of January 25, 2011, police forces began using live ammunition against peaceful protestors in Suez, the city for which the Suez Canal is named.  It goes on to state that the illegal and inhuman practice soon spread to nearly all of the other Egyptian provinces.  In particular, the Fact-Finders named Cairo, Giza, Alexandria, Ismailia, Dakahliah, Qaliubiah, Gharbiha, Sharkiah, Faiyoum, Beni Suef, Assiut, Aswan, and Sinai North.  There are 27 provinces (called Governorates) in which Egypt is administratively divided.

On the matter of death-by-vehicles, the Report states that armored police vehicles were intentionally sent to run over protestors for the purpose of killing or injuring them.  It presented visual evidence on these actions recorded by TV and by networks of social communication media.  In one such recording, a police car is shown veering in the direction of a protestor who was flung to the ground by that vehicular action.  Another similar recording shows another police vehicle backing up against another demonstrator.  The victim was killed.

A third security vehicle with diplomatic license plates was shown speeding towards Tahrir Square and ploughing into throngs of demonstrators, cutting down whoever was in its way.

The Fact-Finders found two such instruments of death parked behind two police stations in the greater Cairo area.  Those vehicles were discovered being dismantled in order to hide their identities.  But the investigators were able to record finger-prints found on the bodies of those vehicles.

Neither the Traffic Department nor the Customs Department could verify the owners of the vehicles.  But the Report referred to an emissary from the U.S. Embassy in Egypt who had filed a report on one of those vehicles as having been stolen from the Embassy.

The Fact-Finders were informed by the Ministry of Health that as of February 20, 2011, the total number of casualties resulting from those practices had reached 384 fatalities and 6467 injured citizens.  Since the tally of fatalities based on reporting by all provinces had reached 846 by February 16, 2011, the Qura Report disputed the veracity of the lower figure.  On that basis, it confirmed that at least 846 deaths had occurred.

The Report also confirmed that among those who met with death in the police ranks were 26 officers and police recruits during the period from January 25 to February 9, 2011.

Summing up their findings on this sector of the Report, the Fact-Finders concluded that:

• The Police has unnecessarily used lethal force in a failed attempt to disperse the demonstrators;
• That the orders to use those methods had to be authorized by the highest level of authority as decreed by standing directives to the Ministry of Interior;
• That the right of protestors to peacefully assemble and voice their grievances is a basic human right as based on the Egyptian Constitution and laws, as well as international law including UN resolutions.  The Report thus cited Egyptian Law No. 109 of 1971 which, in Article 102, provides that:

"A Police Officer should only resort to force to carryout his assigned duties if the use of force is the only method left for him to fulfill his duties."

Only the Interior Minister could exercise that authority, under the Egyptian President giving the green light for such draconian measures.

Thus the grand stage for retrying Mubarak and those who had basked in the sun of his autocratic role was set, although the outcome remains unclear.

This series shall continue in future weeks with Part III.

Why Did Egypt Revolt?: The Facts Through the Fact Finders (Part I)

On Tuesday, January 1, 2013, the Egyptian Fact Finding Commission announced at a press conference in Cairo, its findings into the events which led to the Egyptian Revolution of January 25, 2011.

This blue ribbon commission, which was set up by a decision taken by Egypt's Prime Minister (Decision 294, 2011), was headed by Egypt's past Chief Justice, Dr. Adel Qura.  Its work which covered 400 pages in Arabic dealt with the events from January 25 until Mubarak's fall from power on February 11, 2011.

In this series, beginning with Part I, this blog will highlight the facts as seen by the fact-finders and neutrally reported nearly 2 years later.

The Qura Commission, while analyzing the events as testified to by hundreds of witnesses and backed up by documented of all types of visual, audio and printed material, has in effect produced a unique document. This report should be studied on a world-wide basis.  Reason: It contains a careful and judicious cause and effect of why people, anywhere, revolt.

We begin with the findings into the role of social media in that historic revolution whose course is still undetermined.

The Commission analyzed the ways and means whereby the Mubarak regime, during its dying days, attempted to shut down the Internet.  It said that the three cellular phone servers operating in Egypt have simultaneously cut off their service to certain provinces.  That blackout was in response to orders to them from the Mubarak security services.

Social media, including Facebook and Twitter, have played a crucial role in bringing hundreds of thousands of protesters to Tahrir Square and to other public squares all over that country of nearly 90 million people.  As those means of communication were cut off by governmental design, the blackout also impacted negatively on the means of communication used by the police and other components of the huge security apparatus in Mubarak's Egypt.

The result of that cut-off, while temporarily affecting the means of galvanizing the millions of Egyptians streaming into the public squares, was more devastating to the forces of the so-called "law and order."  This was manifest in severing the links between various chains of command of police and Ministry of Interior chains.  With the chain of hierarchy command disrupted, large police units fled from the streets, decision-making became personalized, police conduct descended into hit and miss, and responsibility for those uncoordinated actions became impossible to determine.

Testifying before the fact-finding Commission, Dr. Amre Badawi Mahmoud, the Executive Head of the National Organization for Communication Coordination, stated in Arabic:

"On January 23, 2011, the top representatives of National Security called the heads of the 3 cellular phone servers to a meeting with them.  An Emergency Operations Headquarters was set up.  Its role was to issue special instructions with regard to both operation and interruption of communications in accordance with the provisions of Article 67 of the Law on Communications.  The reason was given as being the developing of a severe state of emergency in Egypt, affecting the core of national security.  Thus service was ordered to be cut off on January 27, 2011 at 10:00 AM, and was instructed to be resumed on January 29, 2011 around 9:30 AM.  As to the Internet, it was ordered to be suspended on Friday, January 28, 2011 and was resumed on February 5, 2011.

However in the case of the Internet, that interruption did not affect the special frequencies used by the Police.  With public pressure mounting on the Mubarak regime to depart, the blackout was finally ended.  But the fact that it was put into effect has harmed Egypt's world wide reputation as a civilized State.  That is not to mention the negative effects suffered by the cellular phone servers."

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This series shall be continued subject to the exigencies of the fast developing news from Tahrir.

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Under the Sails of Its New Constitution: The New Egypt is Launched

On December 26, 2012, the New Egypt was launched under its democratically-adopted constitution.  Some called it "the Second Egyptian Republic."  Wrong.  The Nasser Coup of 1952 did not launch a First Egyptian Republic.  It inaugurated a dictatorship which coopted the name of "republic" to clothe it with legitimacy.

It is also wrong to call the new Constitution "flawed."  No constitution is born perfect.  It is amendable.

It is also wrong to call it "an Islamist constitution."  We in the U.S. do not call our constitution "Judeo-Christian."  It is an American constitution.

It is also wrong to conjure whether Egypt is going to be a "Pakistan" or an "India."  This is blatant ignorance.  Countries and their systems  have to be evaluated on their own terms.  No two countries are ever alike.

It is also wrong to say that the Egyptian Constituent Assembly lost its legitimacy because one third of its members walked out.  If you are absent, you have no vote.

It is also wrong to say that the new constitution lacks credibility, because only about one-third of the eligible voters participated in the plebiscites of Dec. 15 and Dec. 22.  In legal terms, we only count those who are "present and voting."

It is also wrong for the opposition in Egypt to call for a restart from square one.  This means disfranchising all those millions who voted for going forward.

It is also wrong for some of the elite (Al-Nokhbah) to describe the voting majority as "illiterate."  It is the Nokhbah which needs to be schooled in the art of democracy.

It is also wrong to characterize President Morsi as totally beholden to the Muslim Brotherhood.  He, in June 2012, emerged as the winner in free and fair elections, regardless of the genre of his political roots.  He was not the first choice of the Brotherhood.  El-Shatter was.  But he was disqualified, and Morsi was put forward by the Freedom and Justice Party of the Muslim Brotherhood as their alternative choice.

It is also wrong for the opposition to continue its campaign of nullification after the results of the plebiscite were announced.  Enough is enough.  If you are unhappy with Morsi, or with the Brotherhood, and or with the Constitution, you nonetheless should allow the country to go back to work.  Then reorganize and challenge them in 2016.  But, please get out of the way, and go back to rebuild that collapsed security and economic system.

It is also wrong for the opposition to theorize about certain articles in the Constitution or to say that the document should have "a societal consensus."  In a democracy, you take decisions by a majority vote.  There is no precise definition for "a societal consensus."  Even in Islamic Law, Ijmaa (or consensus) does not mean a total meeting of the minds of all Muslim scholars in a given geographical area.

It is also wrong to say that the Constitution is too detailed.  Refining a constitution is through application and, if necessary, an amendment.  Now that the Shura Council (the upper Chamber of Parliament) is in place, it has all legislative authority and could propose amendments to the lower Chamber when elected in two months.

It is also wrong to claim that Morsi is waging war on the judicial system.  On the contrary.  The Supreme Constitutional Court fired the first shots.  It dissolved the lower chamber of Parliament on a technicality, and manifested interest in also dissolving the Constituent Assembly for the second time in a row.  Now the Constitution governs the principle of separation of powers.

There are other blatant wrongs which the fragmented opposition is committing: Calling on the armed forces to intervene after the people had approved the Constitution; unfurling the banner of a possible civil war;  scaring off the Copts that under the new Constitution their position in Egypt shall be precarious; and calling on outside powers and international institutions either to intervene or to withhold their economic and moral support for the New Egypt.

These wrongs are not only seditious. They are proving that the political thought of the so-called liberals about democracy in Egypt is nearly a black hole.  One does not advocate democracy through the stifling or denigration of the popular will.

Thus it was right for Morsi to declare to the nation on Dec. 26, 2012 that the Constitution "reflects the spirit of the January 25, 2011 revolution; that is based on respect of the rights of citizenship regardless of religion; that the polemics which preceded the adoption of the Constitution by nearly two-thirds of the voters were a healthy democratic sign; that he, prior to that adoption, committed errors (an allusion to his November 22, 2012 constitutional declaration putting him temporarily above the law); and that
"Egypt and the Egyptians now have a constitution which is freely accepted, and which was not a grant from a king nor an imposition by a president, nor a dictation from an occupier."

As I sat in my seat in Egypt Air returning from Cairo to New York City on Dec. 23, a fellow traveller to my right, asked me anxiously about my opinion of the new Constitution.  I provided the above analysis.  Yet I was joyed by that critical question coming from a beautiful young Egyptian woman who was dressed in an Egypt Air uniform.  "What do you do for Egypt Air?," I asked.  "I am a pilot on a brief vacation!!" 

Now this is the new face of Egypt, young, professional, confident and concerned about her country which she sees from above as she flies, as well as from below as she navigates the Cairo crowded streets.


Thus under the sails of its new Constitution, the New Egypt is launched, hopefully towards a destiny of national unity.