A former Egyptian presidential candidate told Al Arabiya TV in an interview on Sunday that the brutal dragging and beating of a naked man near the presidential palace last week was previously planned by the interior ministry in an effort to terrorize the public.
Ahmed Shafiq, who lost the presidential race to Islamist President Mohammed Morsi last year, said the widely circulated video of 50-year-old Hamada Saber was intended to send a message of fear to those protesting in the streets against the brutal reign of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The torture is a “new style of exaggerated terrorism used against the Egyptian citizens that will lead only to violence and hatred of the regime,” Shafiq told Al-Arabiya.
Meanwhile, Saber on Sunday blamed police for the abuse after initially claiming they saved him from protesters.
The presidency described the footage as “shocking”, prompting the interior ministry to order a rare investigation.
While Saber first insisted that police had saved him from protesters, he then changed his account– which was bitterly contested by relatives who said he was being coerced– when prosecutors showed him the video footage, the official MENA news agency reported.
The man, who said he was shot in the foot during the clashes, explained that he initially blamed protesters to “contain the crisis,” the agency reported.
Saber, who has been transferred to a public hospital, said he changed his account and told the “truth” after his family “renounced me…and all of Egypt was angry and people made fun of me on Facebook.”
The main opposition National Salvation Front (NSF) has called for the resignation of Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim over Saber’s beating.
The beating was “an inhumane spectacle… no less ugly than the killings of martyrs, which is considered a continuation of the security force’s program of excessive force,” the opposition bloc said, according to AFP.
Ibrahim ordered a probe into the incident and said he would resign if “that’s what the people want,” his office said.
You read something immensely disturbing concerning the Muslim world—say, that some Muslims seek to legalize sex-slavery or destroy Egypt’s Pyramids or approve of sodomy-suicide-missions or crucify infidels. Your mind—exclaiming “tell me this is a joke!”—finds it difficult to accept such news. Then, somewhere from the bowels of the Internet, relief arrives.
The much welcomed word “Hoax!” appears, reconfirming your worldview. All is well again.
But is it? Are such accounts mere hoaxes? Or is this just another strategy by those who apologize for Islam’s insanities—a strategy that relies exclusively on the fact that the Western mindset cannot fathom such news, anyway, and thus is all too willing to accept the hoax charge without a second thought?
Recall the news that Salafi parliamentarians in Egypt were pushing for a law legalizing necrophilia. This information first appeared in Egypt’s most circulated newspaper, Al Ahram, followed by Al Arabiya. The news went viral, prompting Western dismay. But then a cutesy Christian Science Monitor article titled “Egypt ‘necrophilia law’? Hooey, utter hooey” tried to return us to the status quo. Its author, one Dan Murphy, admonished the many websites that disseminated the necrophilia story: “Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet, kids. At least until there’s like, you know, some proof.”
And his “proof” that it was a hoax? Nothing. He even confirmed that “there was a Moroccan cleric a few years back who apparently did issue a religious ruling saying that husbands remained married to their wives in the first six hours after death and, so, well, you know [i.e., he permitted necrophilia]. But that guy is far, far out on the nutty fringe.”
Aside from Murphy’s immature tone—“so, well, you know” what?—one fails to see how characterizing a cleric as a “nut” means that his religious ruling is a “hoax”—that it never existed? Likewise, when it comes to fatwas, it matters not which nation they hail from, so that Egyptians can easily uphold the fatwa of a Moroccan, or vice-versa, because in Islam there is no “national” distinction, only the umma.
And yet, no matter how shallow or lacking in evidence, the hoax charges resonate well, simply because the mainstream Western mentality instinctively rejects, in this case, the idea of codifying necrophilia.
Much of this is exacerbated by the fact that most Westerners, including reporters, cannot independently verify such stories, as they usually originate in Middle Eastern languages. Which leads to my familiarity with this matter: I get most of my news directly from the Arabic media—knowing that it is better to get my information directly “from the horse’s mouth” than to get it from the limited and filtered Western media.
Accordingly, I am often first to expose stories that go unreported in the West—for instance, the fact that the U.S. embassy in Cairo was being threatened days before the Muhammad movie became a convenient excuse to riot and destroy (the original reason was to coerce the U.S. to free the Blind Sheikh and others).
However, those who prefer to keep such stories suppressed have learned to cry “hoax”—taking advantage of the fact that most Americans cannot read Arabic or verify these accounts for themselves.
Thus, when I documented the indisputable fact that several Islamists were calling for the destruction of Egypt’s Pyramids, the New York Times and Huffington Post cried “hoax”; when I shed light on an obscure “sodomy fatwa” which helped explain the role of intention in Islam (or niyya), Muslims and others cried hoax, including by lying and distorting; and when I reported on how Muslim Brotherhood supporters crucified their opponents, the National Post and others cried hoax.
And yet, none of these naysayers offered any meaningful evidence. Instead, they banked on the fact that it is simply too hard to believe these stories in the first place.
So what should the objective Western reader do—who is stuck in the middle, does not read Arabic, and cannot independently verify anything—when confronted with absurd news emanating from the Islamic world?
Arson is one of the oldest tactics used by terrorists. It is a tactic often executed by less life threatening terrorist such as animal rights and environmentalists groups. Rarely do we see the terror tactic of arson conducted by state sponsored terror groups, until today.
There are three basic forms of terror support—state sponsored, state supported, and non-state supported. Some government institutions claim terrorism is either state supported or non-state supported missing the fact that some groups have been formed and directed by countries like Iran and Syria which make them state sponsored.
The majority of domestic terrorist groups such as the Animal Liberation Front are non-state supported. They receive virtually nothing from any nation state—no support or very little support of any worth.
Groups like Al Qaeda weren’t necessarily created by a nation state nor are they necessarily directed to conduct operations per the instructions by a nation state but they often obtain support through intelligence, safe haven, or logistics which would make Al Qaeda a state supported terror group.
In today’s day and age, and with the ongoing threat of Iran and the continued bloodshed coming out of Syria, it is critical to accept that some terrorist groups are not just receiving support by nation states, but many are becoming state sponsored groups.
A state sponsored terrorist group is similar to a state supported terrorist organization merely in the fact that they receive support by a nation state. The difference though is the fact that state sponsored groups are at times created by a nation state and are often directed by a nation supporting them to conduct specific operations. Hezbollah, a Lebanese based terrorist group with global reach is in fact a state sponsored terrorist organization.
Hezbollah was created by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp. Through Hezbollah’s charter, it is known that their supreme leader is the Ayatollah of Iran—even Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, must answer to the Ayatollah.
Groups like Al Qaeda and their Shi’ite counterpart, Hezbollah, have enough support to conduct large scale operations which are often highly sophisticated and complex. They have the support needed by a nation state to procure military grade explosives, sound and executable intelligence, etc.
There are times when nation states perform clandestine operations and those operations are construed as a form of terror. Remember, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” When this happens, the act or tactic would still be construed as state sponsored terror. Syria is indeed a state sponsor of terrorism even though they didn’t necessarily create a known terrorist group.
In May, Doha experienced a terrorist attack which left 19 persons dead. The attack incorporated one of the most elementary yet highly successful tactics—arson. Doha’s Villagio Mall was set ablaze killing 13 children, four school teachers, and two firemen.
Al Arabiya was able to obtain highly classified cables proving the incident in Doha was actually not an accident. It was a state sponsored attack on a civilian target conducted by the Syrian regime. While this may be construed as a clandestine operation, the fact remains that it was still terrorism by all definitions.
In one of the cables obtained by Al Arabiya, Syrian Major General Dhu al-Himma Shaleesh, head of the president’s Special Security Force, named the operation “Villagio Blaze.”
It is apparent that the Syrian regime has capabilities to conduct terrorist operations throughout the Middle East far beyond their own borders. “Villagio Blaze” was an operation of retaliation and more importantly, it was an operation crossing over multiple nation borders far away from Syria.
Qatar assisted the Free Syrian Army through multiple measures which includes their financing. Through support of the Free Syrian Army, Assad and his regime targeted Qatar’s capital. If the US supported Assad’s opposition, could Assad direct similar operations inside our own homeland?
Kerry Patton, a combat disabled veteran, is the author of ‘Sociocultural Intelligence: The New Discipline of Intelligence Studies’ and the children’s book ‘American Patriotism’. You can follow him on Facebook or at kerry-patton.com/.
Economic Warfare Super Panel – William Scott Fire Wars: Arson as Terror Tactic
The Muslim Brotherhood has been the focus of international angst since gaining power in Egypt, among other nations. Fears over theocratic plans that could further destabilize international relations and spawn greater internal strife have led to guarded reactions from Western nations and Egyptian minority groups, alike. Now, Coptic Christians, who have suffered already at the hands of extremists, are launching their own counter movement — the Christian Brotherhood.
Now that Mohammed Morsi has won the presidential election and secured the throne of power, Coptic Christians are fearing for their future. To counter the influence that Islamists will have in parliament and through the presidency, they have launched the Christian Brotherhood as a counterbalance of sorts. Al Arabiya has more about the group’s formation and goals:
The idea was first initiated in 2005 by lawyer Mamdouh Nakhla, head of al-Kalema Center for Human Rights, and political analyst Michel Fahmi. It was then adopted by Amir Ayad, member of the Maspero Youths Union for Free Copts, the group established after clashes with military forces in front of the TV building in the Cairo district of Maspero left more than 20 Copts dead.
The Christian Brotherhood has branches in 16 governorates in Egypt as well as four branches outside Egypt, three in Europe and one in Australia.
While the group’s roots were set back in 2005, it wasn’t until recently that more action was taken to actually get the movement off the ground. In an interview with Al Arabiya, Fahmi talked about upcoming plans and stated the importance of Coptic Christians being able to “establish a body that can resist the Islamist tide.”
“We created our group to create a balance in the Egyptian political scene,” he said.
This is a hostage situation plain and simple. If Obama makes this exchange, the Muslim Brotherhood will exploit this victory for years to come you can be sure.
Via Jihad Watch:
About to get a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card?
Al-Arabiya is reporting, in Arabic only so far, that the U.S. is talking with the Egyptian government to free the blind Sheikh and 49 other Egyptians currently imprisoned in the U.S. in exchange for the freedom of the 19 Americans the Egyptians are holding.
The blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman, is in prison for his role in masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center jihad terror bombing. If he is freed, it will be the apotheosis of Obama’s policy of appeasement toward the Islamic world.
“Omar Abdel Rahman at the head of Egyptian-American swap deal,” from al-Arabiya (Arabic), February 28 (thanks to Emad). This is my translation from the Arabic:
The Egyptian government has started real action to respond to a U.S. offer offering to release 50 Egyptians in American prisons, including Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, in return for the release of 19 Americans accused of foreign funding of nongovernmental organizations, as confirmed by Major General Mohamed Hani Zaher, an expert on military research and the fight against international terrorism.Zaher told the newspaper that the Egyptians need to exploit the weak U.S. position, especially after the conviction of their nationals on charges affecting Egypt’s sovereignty over its territory, and not to allow this deal to take place without the agreement of the U.S. administration to release more than 500 Egyptian prisoners in U.S. custody; the Egyptian Foreign Ministry does not know anything about them.
He added that the Egyptian Foreign Ministry asked the Egyptian Embassy in Washington for a list of Egyptian prisoners in the United States of America, and the Egyptian consulate there had already started procedures to account for the number of Egyptian prisoners and detainees in custody on a number of charges in the United States, he said, adding that among the prisoners in the Consulate files was Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the Mufti of Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya (the Islamic Group) and currently imprisoned in America….
