CAIRO // Two years ago, Omar Suleiman hurried out the doors of Egypt’s intelligence headquarters to an armoured Mercedes 350 and a BMW X5 idling on a ramp reserved only for the vehicles of the country’s most powerful men.

Instead of sliding into the back seat of the BMW, as he had planned, the former spy chief and newly appointed vice president absent-mindedly stepped into the Mercedes. The mistake probably saved his life.

Minutes after the two-car convoy rolled away from the spy agency in the Hadaeq Al Qobbah neighbourhood of Cairo, the BMW in which Suleiman was supposed to be riding was raked by a hail of automatic weapons fire, killing the driver and a security guard.

The brazen daylight attempt on the life of one of Egypt’s most powerful men was quickly overtaken by other events during the tumultuous final days of the Mubarak regime. Since the January 30, 2011, attack, however, no government investigation has attempted to sort out the mystery of who might have wanted Suleiman dead and why.

A former National Democratic Party official, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the situation in Egypt, said the truth about the assassination plot may not emerge for years, since only a handful of people have knowledge about the machinations of Mubarak and his inner circle as his regime collapsed.

“This man was the vice president travelling in a highly secure zone,” the former official said. “Only a few people on earth knew the route he would take and the time he would take it and the car he would be in. All of that tells me that it was a power struggle at the top.”

There is little doubt that on the penultimate day of January in 2011, the public profile of the already powerful Suleiman was set to rise substantially.

A day before the attack, Mubarak had appointed Suleiman the vice president and given him the job of overseeing a sensitive “national dialogue” with opposition forces, a week into the biggest protests in the country’s history. Hundreds had been killed in clashes with police and the momentum of the movement to topple the presidency was growing.

Poised to play a potentially pivotal role in the outcome of the uprising, Suleiman rose early on the morning of January 30 and headed to the presidential palace in the armoured Mercedes 350 to begin setting up meetings for the dialogue, according to two people to whom Suleiman later recounted the events of the day.

Later that morning, he left the palace and took the same car to the General Intelligence Service (GIS) headquarters to clear out his desk and consult with General Murad Mowafi, his replacement, about the transition. Before entering the headquarters building, he told his driver of 25 years, Zakaria, and personal bodyguard, Mohammed, that he would leave the Mercedes behind for Mr Mowafi’s use. He would take his other car, a BMW X5.

At about 11am, a call came in from Mubarak’s office: the president would like to see Suleiman in half an hour. In the sudden rush to return to the presidential palace, however, he stepped into the Mercedes instead of the BMW.

As both cars sped to the palace, past the Saray El Qobba Palace Gardens and onto Fangary Bridge, Suleiman asked Zakaria why the BMW was accompanying them. Reminded by the driver of his earlier request, Suleiman laughed. I guess I’m preoccupied, he said.

It was after a U-turn, when the cars were near the armed forces medical complex in Kobry El Qobba, that gunmen opened fired on the BMW. In the fusillade, the driver and security guard in the BMW were killed, and another guard was wounded. Several army officers at a nearby checkpoint wildly returned fire, killing one of the gunmen.

Suleiman asked to stop and check on the men in the accompanying car, but Mohammed, his bodyguard, insisted on moving the vice president to safety. He arrived at the palace at 11.30am.

The president opened an investigation into the incident, but it was later closed, according to a source who spoke to Suleiman about that day.

“The bodies vanished,” the source said. “Omar never brought it up again. He only said ‘God must love me because I got into the wrong car’.”

News of the attempted assassination did not leak out for several days, but when several news organisations began issuing stories saying that Suleiman had survived a murder plot it was quickly denied by government officials.

A government statement issued on February 5 and quoted by the Associated Press said that a stray bullet from an exchange of fire between “criminal elements” had struck a car in Suleiman’s motorcade as it moved through a restive area of the city. There was no evidence the vice president was intentionally targeted, it said, adding that the shooting was a random incident.

However, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, Mubarak’s former foreign minister, recalls an unusually chastened Suleiman take unusual security precautions a day after the shooting.

Writing his recently published memoir, My Testimony, Mr Abou Gheit said he saw Suleiman entering from a side entrance rather than the main gate of the presidential palace. A member of the Republican Guard told him that Suleiman had been the target of an assassination attempt the previous day and was taking extra security precautions.

Speaking on the Al Hayat channel on February 24th, 2011, Mr Abou Gheit said that the attackers had fired from inside a “stolen ambulance”.

Before he could publicly offer his own theory of who might have wanted to kill him on that late January day, Suleiman died on July 19, 2012, from complications arising from what his doctors believe was amyloidosis – a disorder caused by the build-up of abnormal proteins in tissues and organs.

Yet his death has not quieted speculation and conspiracy theories about the apparent assassination attempt.

Certainly, many people had a motive to want Suleiman dead. As a senior spy since 1986 and the head of the GIS since 1993, he presided over a crackdown on Islamic extremists. He also allowed the US to send men suspected of terrorism to Egypt, where many of them were tortured and kept in shadowy prisons for years without charges.

The assailants’ detailed knowledge of Suleiman’s itinerary and the car in which car he would be riding has also fuelled conjecture about the possible role of Gamal Mubarak, the son of the president who many argue stood the most to lose with Suleiman’s rise.

Gamal was widely assumed to be preparing to run for the presidency later in 2011 and according to this theory, a newly promoted Suleiman stood in the way of fulfilling that ambition.

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CAIRO // As the world he knew was overturned during the 2011 uprising against the regime of Hosni Mubarak and the investigations that followed, Farouk Hosny sought solace in painting.

No court has found him guilty of any wrongdoing as a cabinet minister during Mubarak’s 29-year rule, yet he chooses his words carefully. Many Egyptians are frustrated that men such as Mr Hosny have not been brought to book in a new, democratic Egypt, so he avoids robust remarks about the Islamist government out of concern that fresh charges may be levelled against him.

“I consider my art like a child is playing with colours,” he says in an interview at his office and studio on the upscale island of Zamalek in Cairo as light violin music plays in the background. “When I am painting, I am escaping, becoming a young soul. I am not affected or polluted by outside events of the atmosphere … Art comes from the heart, even if the mind is occupied.”

But even that meditative process has been interrupted over the past few months as Mr Hosny was forced to defend himself against claims by the government’s corruption investigators that his life savings were derived from illegal activity. The Illicit Gains Authority said his net worth of nine million Egyptian pounds (Dh4.98m) came from embezzlement, but a court acquitted him of all charges on January 5 after finding no evidence that he had broken the law. Mr Hosny maintains that his assets were earned through sales of his paintings and legitimate investments.

A one-time frontrunner for director-general of Unesco, Mr Hosny stepped down in March 2011, just weeks after Mubarak resigned, and fled to Sharm El Sheikh.

He recalls Mubarak’s myopia during the final days of his regime, particularly a “peculiar phone call” on January 29, 2011. The streets were seething and the ruling National Democratic Party had all but collapsed. Despite the situation, Mubarak rang him to ask about the Cairo book fair scheduled to open that day.

“How is the exhibition going?” the president asked.

Mr Hosny, taking a moment, replied that “there is a revolution going on … Nobody will attend”.

Mubarak then asked if it should instead be opened on January 30.

“He had the impression that things were under control,” Mr Hosny says.

Two years after the uprising against Mubarak began, Mr Hosny is delving into painting again. Like his chosen style – abstract – his comments about the country are deliberately vague. The reason, his press aide suggested, is that Egypt’s polarised atmosphere means that any direct comments – especially any that are critical of the Muslim Brotherhood-led government – could result in new accusations and investigations. Therefore, Mr Hosny requested that the interview touched only on human and artistic subjects.

Yet he repeatedly veers back to veiled descriptions of fears for his country’s future and a clash of emotions over the nature of the uprising against his former boss.

“I am inspired by the youth of this country,” he says. “I love the madness and revolution of the youth, their sense of adventure and their guts.”

But, he adds, “there is a distinction between the act of revolution, which is artistic, and the consequences of a revolution”.

He readily admits a relationship of mutual appreciation with Mubarak and calls the former first lady, Suzanne, a great patron of the arts.

“The problem was they were turning Egypt into a monarchy,” he says.

The past two years have been racked by political battles and the rise of followers of political Islam into the highest echelons of government. The streets have erupted in new battles dozens of times over the nature of Egypt’s transition. The conclusion, Mr Hosny says, has not been decided but to him it is an example of the difference between the abstract and the real.

“In Egypt, we dream better than we realise our dreams,” Mr Hosny says.

He sits on a couch in his brightly lit office on the ground floor of a building set in an immaculate garden with a heavy-set golden retriever running around. The walls are covered by his paintings and several originals of Egyptian peasants by Mahmoud Said, the famed modern artist from Alexandria.

A caricature on the wall highlights Mr Hosny’s defining features: a broad smile that forces his eyes to nearly close, big bookish glasses and a wave of black hair reminiscent of the style worn by a mid-20th-century intellectual.

Looking back over his years as the minister of culture, he cites his accomplishments: 42 museums established, 125 libraries built, and the groundwork laid for “mega projects” that would change the face of culture in Egypt for years to come. His Grand Egyptian Museum – a sprawling, 50-hectare salute to the country’s ancient history – is still under construction and is expected to be finished sometime in 2015.

Yet, he calls these successes “islands” amid the huge, dysfunctional bureaucracy that existed under the Mubarak regime and continued after his departure. The country failed to “prepare high-calibre politicians who have the understanding of how to invest in our natural wealth”, he says, beginning a long inventory of Egypt’s lakes, seafronts and deserts.

“Not the old nor the current regimes have shown a grasp of the potential of Egypt as a great country and what could be made of it.”

Avoiding specifics, Mr Hosny says he is worried about Egypt’s cultural path ahead.

“I am afraid about art in Egypt. Every phase has its vision and its evaluation of what art is and how to realise it. There will be art in the future, but not in the way we know it. Art is an energy. It has to get out. In what way, we don’t know.”

http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/egypts-former-culture-minister-paints-and-hopes#ixzz2JNJw3D9n

Mohsen Bahnasi, member of the committee that investigated violence against civilians from January 25th, 2011, to June 30, 2011. Courtesy of David Degner

CAIRO // Twice, the jailed Habib El Adly turned down requests for interviews from investigators probing the tumultuous events of 2011 that transformed Egypt forever.But several weeks after the first petitions in early August last year, the warden of Cairo’s Tora Prison, where El Adly is being held, sent a message saying Egypt’s most-feared security official under Hosni Mubarak had reconsidered.

“Habib El Adly wishes to speak,” the warden said.

It was a watershed moment for a fact-finding commission that was established by Mohammed Morsi last June to investigate the killing of protesters during the turbulent transition from the start of the uprising in January 2011, to Mr Morsi’s swearing-in as president more than 17 months later.

The investigators would finally be able to put their questions to a key figure in the crackdown that left more than 800 dead in the 18 days of demonstrations that forced Mubarak out. They would be able to find out the truth of what happened during those history-altering days.

Or so they thought.

Instead, what came next during five hours of video-recorded questioning of El Adly at the prison went to the heart of why, two years after the uprising, the pursuit of justice and accountability in Egypt remains elusive and the truth of what exactly happened is still shrouded in mystery, speculation and rumours of conspiracy.

When a member of the committee presented El Adly with documentation that showed live ammunition was checked out to police officers during the protests, he denied any knowledge of that taking place.

“He said the police must have disobeyed his orders to only use tear gas and batons,” said Mohsen Bahnasi, 51, a human rights lawyer and member of the steering committee of the commission who reviewed footage of the questioning.

“There is no proof for what he said, but there is also no proof that he ordered killing. We only have the log books showing ammunition was checked out.”

The commission was made up of 16 people, including representatives of the ministries of interior and justice, the military, human-rights lawyers and families of the people killed during protests. They investigated 22 events from January 25 to Mr Morsi’s inauguration. In each, they found proof that people were killed with bullets and also uncovered a series of mysteries that may never be solved.

El Adly’s response to being presented with the log books could easily summarise the whole project, Mr Bahnasi said.

It was no surprise that they struggled with their inquiries. The institutions that investigate crimes and oversee security – the police, the state security, the intelligence agencies – are themselves accused of crimes, making them reluctant participants in digging into the past. Evidence has been lost or burnt in unexplained fires; witnesses have given contradictory statements; and the officials who oversaw the government’s response to the huge demonstrations will not budge.

The allegations investigated by the commission are just one side of the game of mysteries used by different political forces to cast aspersions on their enemies. Former members of the Mubarak’s National Democratic Party and those opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood have their own unanswered questions: how was it possible that dozens of police stations were attacked simultaneously during the uprising and who orchestrated the sieges on prisons that led to the release of dozens of Islamists.

Yousry Abdel Razek, a lawyer who has been an outspoken defender of Mubarak, said the Egyptian people had been duped into believing there had been a democratic revolution.

“There was a conspiracy from afar and from within,” he said of the 18-day uprising, describing how he believes the Brotherhood struck a deal with Hamas and other Islamist groups to help break their members out of prison. “The revolutionaries make claims, but cannot prove it.”

Yet, asked if he had access to Mubarak or detailed information about the family’s finances, he would say only that his job was to ask the other side for proof. “It’s not the job of a lawyer to prove the defence unless the accuser can prove their case,” he said.

With the announcement last week that Mubarak and El Adly would be retried on criminal charges of responsibility in the deaths of protesters, the abiding mysteries of the past two years have again been thrust centre stage.

Khaled Fahmy, a historian at the American University of Cairo, said that the pursuit of truth is itself a “revolutionary act”.

The questions also reveal the nature of the opposition to the new president and his supporters.

“This is part of the political moment of engaging the Brotherhood or embarrassing them or attacking them,” he said. “It’s not just a desire by some distant academics to figure out what happened during a historic moment. It is part of an ongoing political struggle. Like all major events, it’s not about the past, it’s about the present and future.”

Mr Fahmy’s own project, a documentation of those events for the Egyptian National Archives, has suffered from the opacity of the government and the reluctance of witnesses to give testimony for fear of reprisal from the police, army and state security.

What is more, he claims memory is more of a prism from which the world is viewed than a straightforward recollection of events.

He recently remembered an event from January 28, 2011 that he hadn’t thought about since that day. A police officer on the Kasr El Nil bridge ended up isolated from his fellow officers and was attacked by protesters. Several protesters formed a cordon around him and escorted him back to the other side.

“I don’t know why I forgot that,” he said. “Memory plays tricks.”

A 781-page report prepared by the commission, which has not been published, is now under review by a team at the public prosecution to determine if new charges could be levied against Mubarak and other officials. There is still uncertainty about whether Mubarak and El Adly could face a stronger sentence than the life imprisonment they received in the original trial, and about how new evidence can be used.

One of the most prominent leaks from the report was that Mubarak had a specialTV feed in his palace showing the events in Tahrir Square. Mr Bahnasi, a member of the commission’s steering committee, said it was proof that Mubarak’s claims of ignorance of what was happening on the streets were not true.

But Ahmed Ragheb, a member of the commission, believes the furore over the television feed was just hype. The far more damning evidence was the logs showing live ammunition was checked out of police and army arsenals.

“Yes, it’s a fact that Mubarak had a TV feed,” he said. “But knowing this is not going to help us build a new Egypt. For that we need to know what happened in the streets with the police and the army. Who killed the Egyptian people? This is the big question we tried to answer.”

http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/middle-east/cracking-the-mysteries-of-the-egyptian-revolution-proves-elusive#ixzz2JNJQQ6BJ

CAIRO // Two carriages of a rusting, decrepit train part from the tracks and collide with a stationary cargo train, killing 19 young security recruits. Another train ploughs into a school bus in a village in Upper Egypt, killing 51, mostly children. An eight-storey building collapses in Alexandria, ending the lives of 17.

Such tragedies in the past few months have made painfully clear the degraded state of Egypt‘s buildings and infrastructure.

They also highlight the difficulties faced by Mohammed Morsi, under pressure to deliver on his presidential election promise of an Egyptian renaissance.

He has relied on a cabinet of technocrats to steer Egypt back on track, but the worsening economic situation, failure of the state to provide essential services, a corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy and tragic accidents are giving ammunition to his opponents just three months before parliamentary elections.

Mr Morsi’s approval rating fell to 63 per cent at the end of December from a high of 79 per cent after 80 days in office, according to the polling group Baseera.

The poll, conducted by randomly calling landline and mobile phones of 1,833 Egyptians, suggests that a significant educated, middle-class segment of the population is more willing to shift political allegiances depending on the government’s performance, said Magued Osman, the chief executive of Baseera.

“This group is changing its opinion the most,” he said. “They will be an important group in deciding how powerful the Brotherhood is in the upcoming elections.”

Members of the Muslim Brotherhood and its political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, have blamed the country’s problems on decades of stagnation and corruption under the regime of Hosni Mubarak. The Brotherhood’s opponents have blamed the prime minister, Hisham Qandil, and are eager to use the recent catastrophes in their bid to supplant the government’s authority.

And it is not only the educated middle classes who are judging the government on its performance, and weighing their votes accordingly. A window into shifting political allegiances in poorer areas can be found in the Nile Delta village of Imyai, an hour north of Cairo.

Here, about 15,000 people make a living mostly from producing boxes for fruits and vegetables out of the flimsy wood of palm trees. Yet some of the town’s elders are growing impatient.

“The only thing that has changed in Egypt after the revolution is that the barrier of fear has been broken,” said Fathi Abdel Raouf, 49, a small-scale farmer. “We aren’t afraid to say what we think or even say it to the face of the president.

“Other than that, we have just seen the end of the National Democratic Party and the rise of the Brotherhood.”

Mr Raouf said nearly all of Imyei’s improvement projects, including drinking-water pipelines and new schools, stopped after the 2011 uprising. The only tangible change has been rising costs for bread and gas cylinders for cooking.

Sitting beside him in a majlis in the village, Fathi Humeida, 50, described how poor services in Imyei create a vicious cycle of poverty. He contracted Hepatitis C from a vaccination and has kidney problems from the poor quality of the drinking water. His health problems have required him to spend extra hours hunched over, making boxes so that he can afford medical care.

But the overtime has taken its toll on Mr Humeida’s back, requiring even more treatment.

“I work all the time so I can live longer,” he said. “There is no such thing as saving. We have to use every single pound for something here.”

Both men are leaning toward leftist political movements in the elections because none of the promises from the Brotherhood had come through.

It is such voters – who are willing to change their political preferences based on government performance – who could play a pivotal role in the elections.

“The Brotherhood does not have enough members on its own to win an outright majority,” said Mazen Hassan, a professor of political science at Cairo University. “To win, they need to reach out beyond their core constituency. We have seen in every election how this group of voters in the middle plays an important role.”

Reforming Egypt’s infrastructure and services may prove to be the greatest challenge on the horizon because the problems are rooted in bureaucracy.

Train safety, for instance, has received more than Dh1 billion of investment from European donors and the World Bank over the past several years. A team of Italian rail executives has been seconded to the state-run Egyptian National Railways since 2008, helping to implement a modernisation programme.

But that has not stopped five serious accidents since last July, with more than 70 killed and dozens injured.

Essam Selim, the former chairman of the Egyptian Railway Maintenance and Services Company, said the thorniest problem for safety on the railways was in human resources. He was brought in to run the subsidiary of the state railway company in 2006 and left in 2011.

“The public sector is full of people who are very unmotivated and afraid of making decisions,” he said. “There is no career path, no training. This is our most dangerous problem.”

The railway infrastructure – tracks, signalling equipment and carriages – is old but not on the verge of collapse, he said. The problem lay in getting people to follow through on their responsibility to check each part and sign off only on equipment that is safe for use.

“On paper, everything is fine, but the question is about whether the paperwork is accurate,” he said. “If a spare part isn’t available, there is pressure to sign off on something even if everything is not right. The problem is the culture.”

http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/middle-east/morsi-blamed-as-egypts-infrastructure-crumbles#ixzz2JNIcMczv

CAIRO // The decision to retry Hosni Mubarak has prompted fears that the former president may never be held legally accountable for his alleged role in the deaths of more than 800 Egyptian protesters nearly two years ago.

By accepting an appeal from Mubarak, the Court of Cassation has also opened the possibility that he could be completely acquitted of all charges. There is also a chance that Mubarak, 84, who has repeatedly been hospitalised for among other things, falling in the bathroom and injuring himself, does not live to see a final verdict.

The decision to try Mubarak again highlights how elusive justice has been in the country’s tumultuous political transition and it is likely to have far-reaching implications for family members of those who died in the 2011 uprising as well as for president Mohammed Morsi.

“The only feeling I have is being afraid that now Mubarak will be released,” said Moaamen Mahrous, whose brother Mohamed Mahrous, 29, was killed in front of a police station in the Darb El Ahmar area of Cairo on January 28th, 2011. “They had no real evidence before and I don’t believe anything has changed.”

Soha Said, whose husband Osama Mohammed was also killed on that day, said she was worried of a secret deal by members of the Mubarak regime and the new government led by the Muslim Brotherhood.

“The Brotherhood don’t care about justice for the martyrs,” she said. “For them the revolution is already won and they are picking the fruits. I’m nervous.”

Soon after Mr Morsi was inaugurated in June, he established a special committee to investigate allegations of crimes during the uprising and other clashes under the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

The details of the report have yet to be released, but several leaks to Egyptian newspapers have suggested that it uncovered new details of Mubarak’s knowledge of the violence used against protesters.

Ali El Gineidy, a member of the committee who wrote the report, said yesterday that the new evidence was strong enough “to hang Mubarak”.

“I am very optimistic this time,” he said. “We can get the death penalty.”

But the report is also said to contain allegations of improprieties by the Brotherhood, the group in which Mr Morsi was a long-time, high-level official, and the military.

Yousry Abdel Razek, one of Mubarak’s lawyers, pledged to use the retrial to air evidence his team has uncovered about the Brotherhood attacking protesters.

“We will ask the judges to consider the recent attacks on protesters outside the presidential palace,” he said. “People were killed and injured there. Isn’t it the same as what happened to Mubarak? Morsi should take the same responsibility.”

Mubarak and Habib Al Adly, the former minister of interior, were sentenced in their first trial to life in prison on the reasoning that they did not use their considerable powers to stop the bloodshed during the early days of protests that kicked off on January 25th, 2011.

That verdict in July was met with mixed emotions across Egypt because many felt the initial charges were not broad enough to encompass nearly three decades of police-state oppression and corruption that many blame on Mubarak. Adding to the unease was a sense that the investigation into the regime’s actions during those fateful 18 days were not properly investigated.

In the original case, the prosecutor was unable to prove Mubarak directly ordered the use of deadly force. Another set of charges involving corruption by Mubarak, his sons and a business tycoon were thrown out because the statute of limitations on the accusations had expired. In addition, six top security officials were acquitted of charges that they were responsible for the protesters’ deaths.

The retrial of Mubarak and Al Adly will be overseen by a different panel of judges and likely include new evidence that could go further in establishing responsibility in the crackdowns of 2011.

The challenge of the case is that amid the uprising is one of evidence. There were no crime scene specialists collecting testimonies or documents amid the chaos. Many documents were burnt in the National Democratic Party headquarters, which was set aflame during protests, and subsequent mysterious fires in ministries and arms of the security apparatus in the weeks after Mubarak resigned.

Even some key witnesses are no longer available to testify. Omar Suleiman, the former spy chief who was appointed by Mubarak as his first vice president during the uprising, died last summer of lung and heart complications. Other powerful figures who were aware of exactly what was going on in the presidential palace are in prison and unlikely likely to divulge information that would further incriminate themselves.

“The problem is we never created a system of transitional justice after the revolution,” said Judge Adel Maged, vice president of the Court of Cassation. “It’s impossible to use the same criminal procedures for political crimes as for regular crimes.”

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CAIRO // The Egyptian president, Mohammed Morsi, is walking a diplomatic tightrope with the United Arab Emirates as he weighs Cairo’s response to the arrests of several Egyptians accused of links to the Muslim Brotherhood.

On Wednesday, three senior Egyptian officials and their aides, including the head of Egypt’s General Intelligence Services, flew to the Emirates to meet their counterparts and delivered a message from Mr Morsi to Sheikh Khalifa, President of the UAE.

The letter was handed to Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, on Wednesday evening by Essam Al Haddad, Mr Morsi’s adviser on foreign policy, the state news agency Wam reported.

Egypt’s senate yesterday set up a council to “work towards the release of Egyptian doctors in the Emirates and investigate the circumstances of [their] arrest”, Egyptian newspapers quoted senate president Ahmed Fahmi as saying.

The allegations go to the heart of fears among Arabian Gulf leaders that Muslim Brotherhood supporters would attempt to “export the revolution” to their countries and overthrow seated governments, said Namira Negm, a visiting professor at the American University of Cairo, who is on a sabbatical from the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“If the claims are proven, it would be very serious,” she added. “We haven’t seen this since the Iranian revolution. It would not just impact UAE-Egyptian relations, but the whole region and internally in Egypt.”

The delegation of envoys from Egypt also raised questions about whether Mr Morsi was upholding the rights of Egyptian expatriates accused of crimes or protecting members of the Brotherhood, in which he was a long-time official.

“There’s a big question mark,” Ms Negm said. “I’m not sure he would have done the same for other Egyptians who get in trouble.”

Abdallah Al Ashaal, a former diplomat, said Mr Morsi’s decision to include in the delegation Mr Al Haddad, a leading Brotherhood member, was a mistake because the president should be acting as the head of the state of Egypt and not the group from which he came.

“The messenger from Egypt should not be from the Muslim Brotherhood,” he said.

The problem for Mr Morsi was that he is more accountable now than when he was a leader of an underground organisation, said Mr Al Ashaal. The Brotherhood was a banned group in Egypt before the 2011 uprising that toppled the regime of Hosni Mubarak.

“The Muslim Brotherhood in power has to be different than the Muslim Brotherhood in prison,” he said. “Now, they are the rulers of Egypt and they have to look at everything in an impartial way. That’s why I don’t think this mission will succeed.”

Analysts said that any worsening of the relationship between Egypt and Arabian Gulf countries could also impact their economic ties at a time when Egypt is in desperate need of support for its crumbling economy.

No official charges against the men have been revealed, but a security source told Al Khaleej newspaper in Sharjah that investigators had the men under surveillance for several years and had found evidence of secret gatherings around the country and that they had recruited Egyptians in the UAE to their organisation.

The group was also said to have set up companies in the Emirates to support it financially, collected large sums of money to send illegally to its parent organisation in Egypt and gathered confidential information about the UAE’s defence capabilities.

Article 180 of the UAE’s penal code bans the formation of any political organisation or any organisation that compromises the security of the state, together with having any connections with foreign bodies to harm the political leadership.

One of the Egyptians detained in the UAE was Abdullah Zaza, 66, a dentist in Umm Al Qaiwain who had lived there since 1985, according to his son in Egypt, Ahmed Zaza.

“I love the Emirates and lived there most of my life,” he said. “I am sure that there was a mistake. My father was not part of any group. He was happy there as a dentist.”

He said his father was informed on December 3 that he must leave the country within 15 days for undisclosed reasons. Mr Zaza began trying to sell his apartment and close his dental practice but on December 11, police arrested him. Ahmed said he had not had any contact with his father since then.

Relatives of the detained men were planning to hold a vigil in front of the Arab League headquarters on Sunday, he said.

Abdul Mawgoud Dardery, the spokesman for the foreign relations committee of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice party, said he had no information about whether the detained men were part of the Muslim Brotherhood.

http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/middle-east/morsi-faces-diplomatic-test-over-uae-arrests#ixzz2JNHmkOzL

CAIRO // Egypt’s new constitution has been called the beginning of a repressive Islamist state, the greatest constitution in the country’s history and a middling document unworthy of the uprising that unseated Hosni Mubarak.

It may turn out to be none of these things, but it does set the outlines for the power and legal struggles to come as Egypt forges a new democratic path.

Enshrining in the legal system a role for Al Azhar, the 1,000-year-old mosque and university and Sunni Islam’s highest authority, could be the most important change of all.

Judges and politicians – and before them, kings and rulers – have sought the advice of Al Azhar’s scholars for centuries, but the new constitution lays out changes to the institution in the greatest detail yet. It both guarantees Al Azhar independence over its affairs and gives it a consultative role in determining if new laws are compliant with sharia.

Secularists and liberals fear Al Azhar’s influence, but the organisation has a more conservative view. Sheikh Mohamed Gemeaha, Al Azhar’s spokesman, said the institution’s age-old role is simply spelled out for the first time.

“We are proud of achieving independence in the new constitution,” he said. “This is something we have wanted for a long time. But we have always consulted on matters of sharia. This is not something new.”

Historically, the Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) has consulted Al Azhar on Sharia, but it was not required to do so by law. The SCC took the view that the vast body of research and sometimes conflicting rulings that makes up Sharia only had a limited application in law. Areas such as inheritance were clear cut, in the view of the judges, but issues such as whether wearing a veil was a religious obligation were not.

“The constitution is not itself a battle field, but it is opening different battle fields that will have an impact on daily life in Egypt,” said Georges Fahmi, a researcher at the non-profit group Arab Forum for Alternatives and an expert on how religious authorities in Egypt and Turkey support democracy.

A prime example of the SCC’s stance toward Sharia came in the 1990s, when a father of two school girls sought to overturn a 1994 decree by the minister of education banning students from wearing the full face veil, or niqab. Awad El Murr, then president of the SCC, ruled that the decree did not interfere with the requirements of Islam.

“It would be impractical to regard as mandatory a phantom-like dress for women … The Quran, along with the sayings of the Prophet do not portray women as figures hidden under a screen, draped from head-to-toe, with no part of their bodies except their eyes revealed, Judge El Murr wrote in his 1997 ruling.

The new constitution will make it difficult for the SCC to continue with this position especially as it is obligated now to consult first with Al Azhar on matters pertaining to Sharia, Mr Fahmi said.

A salient comparison comes from 1980, when the constitution was first amended to include “principles of Sharia” as the basis of legislation. Islamists at the time pushed for an extensive review of all laws for Sharia compliance. The president at the time, Anwar Sadat, and Mubarak, who became president in 1981 after Sadat’s assassination, used their power to prevent that from happening.

“The Salafists will now use their seats in parliament to push for a review of all laws in the same way,” Mr Fahmi said. “The question is will anyone stop them? Will the Brotherhood remain pragmatic or will they agree?”

The impact of such a review could be felt everywhere from the rights of divorced mothers and curriculum of schools to the government obtaining interest-bearing loans and funding of the arts.

Changes in Egypt may not come suddenly because Al Azhar’s top officials have for now managed to avoid a full-on democracy within the institution itself.

Amid the uprising there were fears that Ahmed Al Tayyeb, the grand sheikh of Al Azhar, would be forced out because of his record of supporting the president.

Even when Mubarak was clinging onto power, Sheikh Al Tayyeb took the risk of being one of the first officials to call for reform. He did so, in part, because of his tenuous situation. Sheikh Al Tayyeb, a Mubarak-appointee and a member of the ruling National Democratic Party, was himself a target for his record of supporting the president as a wave of unrest gripped the country.

The grand sheikh went on to carve a moderate role for Al Azhar in the tumultuous political landscape after the uprising, establishing a document with support from across the political spectrum that guaranteed freedom of belief and expression.

The military generals who took over from Mubarak were also aware of the crucial role of Al Azhar. In a rushed decree before the first parliament was seated in January 2012, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces issued a law that changed the system of choosing the Grand Sheikh. A council of senior scholars would elect him instead of allowing the president to appoint him, but it also allowed Sheikh Al Tayyeb to remain in place until death or senility. And he would be the one to appoint the council of senior scholars, guaranteeing that new religious currents could not change the temperament of Al Azhar for years to come.

But that law could be overturned or replaced in the new parliament. Al Azhar will remain independent because of the new constitution, but Sheikh Al Tayyeb’s position is not guaranteed, analysts said.

One tool of those opposing him, including Salafists who want a more conservative leader for Al Azhar is Article 232 of the constitution which says “leaders of the dissolved National Democratic Party shall be banned from political work and prohibited to run for presidential or legislative elections for a period of 10 years”.

http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/middle-east/al-azhar-rises-in-new-egypt#ixzz2JNHN1r5y

CAIRO // Erratic government by Mohammed Morsi is sowing doubt and mistrust abroad and threatening the new president’s ability to achieve desperately needed economic recovery.

A Swiss court has denied Egypt access to crucial documents related to its investigation into Mubarak-era corruption because of Mr Morsi’s attempts to interfere with the judiciary.

The court portrayed Egypt under Mr Morsi as a collection of dysfunctional institutions and an overly powerful executive branch willing to overrule the courts.

Mr Morsi plunged Egypt into political turmoil last month when he issued a decree giving himself powers beyond the oversight of the judiciary and protecting a committee writing a new constitution from being dissolved by the courts. The Islamist-dominated committee then rushed through a draft constitution even after more than 20 of its 100 members walked out in protest.

The decree and the constitution, which preliminary results show 56.5 per cent of Egyptians approved in the first of two referendum votes, sparked huge demonstrations by opposition forces.

“The Arab Republic of Egypt is currently facing an internal transition characterised by instability of institutions and unannounced organisational changes,” the court ruling said.

It said that even if the constitution were approved in the referendum, “it is difficult to predict how it will be implemented and still leaves many open questions”.

The ruling said Mr Morsi’s public comments about re-trying Hosni Mubarak before a criminal court, despite a life sentence already imposed for his role in the deaths of protesters during last year’s uprising against his regime in June, and the president’s “sudden and unpredictable” interference in the judiciary, were other causes for concern.

The decision from Switzerland’s supreme court comes after Germany announced it was postponing a plan to write off €240 million (Dh1.17bn) of Egyptian debt because of reservations about Mr Morsi’s recent decrees. Egypt also delayed a US$4.8 billion (D17.6bn) loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund because of the political unrest.

Together, the developments indicate that the political turmoil isa beginning to have a serious effect on Egyptian foreign policy and economic recovery efforts.

“The developments in Egypt are not just an internal issue, as this case shows. There is an external effect,” said Gretta Fenner Zinkernagel, managing director of the Basel Institute on Governance in Switzerland. “And if the government does not make any progress on the Mubarak corruption cases, then there will be even more problems in Egypt.”

The Swiss ruling came after Egypt requested access to a wealth of confidential Swiss banking documents related to members of the Mubarak regime and their confidants. But such access is granted only if Switzerland is confident the information will not be used in any court cases or leaked before legal proceedings in Switzerland have finished.

Tunisia last year won access to similar documents from Switzerland relating to the regime of Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali. But the Swiss supreme court said in a decision on December 12, which was made public on Tuesday, that it was not confident Egypt would uphold its guarantees, particularly after the prosecutor general who signed them, Abdel-Meguid Mahmoud, was ousted as a result of Mr Morsi’s November 22 decree.

Hossam El Shazly, a political analyst who has been studying Egypt’s international corruption investigations from Switzerland, said the decision would slow down some of Egypt’s attempts to recover “stolen” assets from abroad.

“The Swiss Courts are very focused on documents and the letter of the law,” he said. “The Egyptian government will have to prove the situation has calmed down before it has a chance to reapply for access.”

Germany’s development minister, Dirk Niebel, gave a more blunt assessment in an interview this week with the newspaper Berliner Zeitung.

“There is the danger that the dictatorial system of ousted president Mubarak is returning,” he said.

Egypt could have used access to the Swiss documents to fill in many of the gaps in its global investigation into corruption cases related to the Mubarak regime. Many top businessmen and government officials in Egypt used Swiss banks to hold their assets. Access to Swiss investigative records would show how these people are connected, which banks they used and what payments they made and received over a number of years.

The denial of access is a stumbling block for Egyptian investigators, who have struggled to find what many believe are tens of billions of dollars worth of stolen assets hidden in offshore companies and bank accounts around the world.

Switzerland has disclosed that it has frozen $755m worth of assets connected to politically involved Egyptians. The total assets frozen in jurisdictions across the world at the request of Egypt amount to about $1.2bn, according to the Illicit Gains Authority in Egypt.

Mr Morsi backtracked on his decree this month, replacing it with a milder version, but the protests have continued through this week as Egyptians prepared to vote in the second round of the constitutional referendum on Saturday. Throughout, Mr Morsi has maintained the decisions were a temporary security measure to protect Egypt from a conspiracy by members of the Mubarak regime.

But even if it passes, establishing a new legal framework for Egypt, opposition forces have pledged to continue protests against the president until the constitution is significantly amended and he stops interfering with the judiciary.

http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/middle-east/egypt-in-peril-of-international-isolation#ixzz2JNH5HptU

CAIRO // Nearly two years ago, the uprising against the regime of Hosni Mubarak saw protesters from across the political spectrum – leftists and Islamists, shop vendors and doctors – fighting in the streets around Tahrir Square against black-clad riot police.

They were unified in their disgust with the pitiful results of 30 years of autocracy: the fruits of economic growth had not filtered down to most Egyptians, freedoms were restricted and political life had been strangled. They won the battle, forcing Mubarak to resign as president.

The scenes in front of the presidential palace over the past several days have shown the extent of the polarisation and breakdown in society since Tahrir’s early days, with Islamist groups and protesters against Mubarak’s replacement, Mohammed Morsi, clashing in the streets with rocks, Molotov cocktails, fireworks and, in some cases, guns. At least five died and hundreds were injured. The same black-clad police who revolutionaries fought throughout last year and this tried to hold the two sides from killing each other.

The tensions fuelling this fight have been brewing since the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, of which Mr Morsi was once a member, emerged last year as the strongest political power in Egypt. Their dominance shocked liberals, who feared the beginnings of a theocracy.

But the true origin lies in the shoddy transition road map created by the military generals who took power when Mubarak resigned in February last year. Whether that plan, where elections came before the writing of a new constitution, was structured to fail or was simply poorly done is still a mystery. The consequences, however, are clear. The democratic transition is in crisis.

For both the Islamist backers of the president and the loose-knit opposition movement the options are not promising.

Mr Morsi could rescind the declaration he issued last month that gave him sweeping powers without judicial oversight, but risk Egypt’s judges ordering a restart of the constitutional process and the dissolution of the upper house of parliament.

The judges could go a step further and order the Muslim Brotherhood illegal. The Brotherhood was a banned organisation under Mubarak and have never officially registered with the proper authorities in Egypt to work as a non-profit group, so some of their opposers have filed cases to declare the group as illegal. If Mr Morsi instead stays the course, Egypt’s streets could see escalating clashes that risk the country’s stability.

Likewise, the opposition movement is facing two undesirable paths. If they stay on the streets, they risk more deaths of their members and a dangerous escalation of the polarisation of the country. If the constitution is voted through on December 15, Mr Morsi’s new powers will expire but they will live under a constitution they vehemently oppose. If it is voted down, Mr Morsi will retain his near dictatorial powers for the foreseeable future.

It will take a tremendous willingness to compromise on both sides to get through this period.

http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/africa/egypts-transition-in-danger-of-implosion#ixzz2JNGWbRQ5

CAIRO // Egypt’s corruption investigators are examining the sale of a private jet in 2011 by a business tycoon tied to the regime of Hosni Mubarak as part of a money-laundering investigation, officials say.

Investigators believe that after fleeing Egypt last year, just days before Mubarak stepped down, Salem immediately began liquidating his global holdings and hiding his wealth in complex offshore accounts and companies that shroud ownership in secrecy.

Egypt is endeavouring to prove that the jet-setting, cigar smoking 78-year-old, who rose from lowly bureaucrat to influential businessman during Mubarak’s rule, has improperly sold and hidden assets to avoid having to hand them over to Egyptian authorities.

After The National uncovered details of the sale of another private jet belonging to a company controlled by Salem, Egypt’s illicit gains authority said last week it was beginning a new investigation into the ownership of a Falcon 2000EX aircraft.

“We are now investigating the sale of this plane,” Ahmed Saad, a senior counsellor at the Illicit Gains Authority, told The National last week. “We are looking closely at all of his actions, especially after the Public Prosecution first filed a case against him last year.”

Another of Salem’s private jets, a Cessna 680 Citation Sovereign is impounded at Cairo airport.

The Falcon 2000EX now under investigation, which bore the registration G-EDHY, originally belonged to Victoria Aviation in the offshore tax haven of Guernsey, in the UK.

Court documents in Egypt have identified Victoria Aviation as belonging to Salem.

Such planes retail for more than US$20 million (Dh73m) when bought new.

Documents obtained from the Guernsey Company registry identify a lawyer associated with many of Salem’s offshore companies as a director.

The jet’s history is now being examined closely because of its sale less than three months after the Egyptian public prosecutor indicted Mubarak, his two sons and Salem on corruption charges in May 2011. It was sold to Ali Evsen, a Turkish businessman with a host of ties to Salem that are under investigation by Egyptian authorities.

His company, the Evsen Group, is based in Azerbaijan. Salem and Mr Evsen were arrested in Spain by Spanish police, on Spanish charges of money-laundering in Spain.

Salem has sought asylum in Spain while there are also Egyptian charges against Mr Evsen.

A photo taken by a plane watcher – one of thousands of amateur photographers who take pictures of planes as they land in airports across the world and post them to websites – in Ireland on November 2011, shows the name “Evsen” next to the door. Its registration after the sale by Victoria Aviation in July was ZA-EVA, which means it was headquartered in Albania where Mr Evsen formerly owned Albanian Airlines.

Records show the plane was sold by Evsen Group on November, 17, 2011, to an unidentified buyer in the US.

Mr Saad, a senior counsellor at the illicit gains authority in Egypt, said investigators were now examining the transaction as part of its wider investigation into allegations of money laundering by Salem. Any sale of property or transfer of asset after the indictment of Salem in 2011 is considered by Egyptian investigators as an attempt to hide wealth from the Egyptian government.

Their investigations into allegations of money laundering have homed in on the nexus of connections between Salem and Mr Evsen.

During the past year and a half, investigators closely examining several transactions between Salem and Mr Evsen.

Their relationship goes back to 2008 when Salem sold his stake in East Mediterranean Gas Company to Mr Evsen for an undisclosed price. In June 2012, a criminal court sentenced a former oil minister, five of his deputies and Salem on charges of “hurting the country’s interest” and “enabling others to make financial gains” related to EMG. They received varying prison sentences and were together fined $2.1 billion.

A Panama-registered company, Clelia Assets Corporation, also had its directorships transferred from the names of Salem’s two adult children, Khaled and Magda, to two executives of the Evsen Group in Azerbaijan after Salem’s indictment in 2011, according to records in Panama.

Salem is under house arrest in Spain and Mr Evsen is reportedly in Spain, but his exact status is not known.

http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/africa/egypts-corruption-investigators-zoom-in-on-tycoons-private-jet-sale#ixzz2JNG4v4fK