Robert Fisk: Is the army tightening its grip on Egypt?

[seafan]

Parliament dissolved. Constitution suspended.

But the Army has thus far refused to drop the emergency law or to free political prisoners.



Fisk writes:

February 14, 2011

.....

As for the freeing of political prisoners, the military has remained suspiciously silent. Is this because there are prisoners who know too much about the army's involvement in the previous regime? Or because escaped and newly liberated prisoners are returning to Cairo and Alexandria from desert camps with terrible stories of torture and executions by – so they say – military personnel. An Egyptian army officer known to 'The Independent' insisted yesterday that the desert prisons were run by military intelligence units who worked for the interior ministry – not for the ministry of defence.

As for the top echelons of the state security police who ordered their men – and their faithful 'baltagi' plain-clothes thugs -- to attack peaceful demonstrators during the first week of the revolution, they appear to have taken the usual flight to freedom in the Arab Gulf. According to an officer in the Cairo police criminal investigation department whom I spoke to yesterday, all the officers responsible for the violence which left well over 300 Egyptians dead have fled Egypt with their families for the emirate of Abu Dhabi. The criminals who were paid by the cops to beat the protesters have gone to ground – who knows when their services might next be required? – while the middle-ranking police officers wait for justice to take its course against them. If indeed it does.

All this, of course, depends on the size of the archives left behind by the regime and the degree to which the authorities, currently the army, are prepared to make these papers available to a new and reformed judiciary. As for the city police, who hid in their police stations before they were burned down on 28th January, they turned up at the interior ministry in Cairo yesterday to demand better pay. That the police should now become protesters themselves – they are indeed to receive pay rises – was one of the more imperishable moments of post-revolutionary Egypt.

Now, of course, it is Egypt's turn to watch the effects of its own revolution on its neighbours. Scarcely a family in Egypt was unaware yesterday of the third day of protests against the president in Yemen and the police violence which accompanied them. And it is remarkable that just as Arab protesters mimic their successful counterparts in Egypt, the state security apparatus of each Arab regime faithfully follows the failed tactics of Mubarak's thugs.

Another irony has dawned on Egyptians. Those Arab dictators which claim to represent their people – Algeria comes to mind, and Libya, and Morocco – have signally failed to represent their people by not congratulating Egypt on its successful democratic revolution. To do so, needless to say, would be to saw off the legs of their own thrones.

Again, we ask, What will happen to all of the torture rendition records...

Sounds like a job for Cheney's industrial paper shredders.

[midnight]

1. Maybe..... If that guy who tortures people is in charge.

[BeFree]

2. The revolution must be sustained

And as for congratulations that is the truth: any such demonstration is cutting legs from under neath.

Even here, we hear the bushco apologists who supported using violence to further their style of 'democracy' are now squirmingly attempting to downplay what the people of Egypt have started.

Because what the people did there could end up cutting bushco members from further riches and tv prestige.