Abdullah Assem : He is a Human After All

Yesterday news came from the United States Egypt’s teenage inventor Abdullah Assem stayed there refusing after the end of the Intel ISEF conference to return back to Egypt for fear he would be arrested and imprisoned. Since then controversy has not stopped.

Abdullah Assem at the ISEF "Abdullah Assem FB" 

Now what’s the story of Assem ?

Assem testing his application 

 It started with a 17 years old teenage geek from Assuit who was awarded in an Intel Egypt ISEF competition this year and was qualified to represent Egypt in Intel ISEF 2014 in Los Angles competing other students from around the globe. Assem’s research was about helping quadriplegic patients to interact with computers using eye glasses and motion sensors. Assem was honored personally by the minister of education and everything seemed so fine but it is always bad to be in the wrong place in the wrong time nowadays in Egypt.

Abdullah Assem was arrested when he was in Cairo , in downtown Cairo to be precise near Tahrir square during a Pro-Morsi protest last April. According to Assem he was not protesting but rather passing by buying computer’s supplies from Downtown shops . According to his friends Assem is not interested in politics as his main focus is his research.
Of course the ministry of interior got another version of the story as usual. According to the MOI Assem torched two police vehicles in a Pro-Morsi protest in his hometown Assuit !!
It is worth to mention that Assem is a member of Upper Egyptian technology society aka S3Geeks. S3Geeks is a Fantastic initiate launched by independent Upper Egyptian developers and geeks to spread technology and programming in the always forgotten Upper Egypt . Thanks to S3Geeks people knew about the case of Assem and media began to demand his release.
After noise in the media , the ministry of interior released him pending the case for a bail. He was not allowed to travel at first from Cairo airport but the authorities let him travel again after another big noise in the media.

Assem showing his application at the ISEF 

In the United States the supervisors of the trip assigned by the ministry of education to accompany the Egyptian took Assem’s passport hiding it and it seems that one of his supervisors told him that despite he may get arrested if he returned back to Egypt but it did not matter because he may get released. This is according to US Al Jazeera correspondent Mostafa El-Hossainy in LA.
At the same time the LAPD as well Intel ISEF got a tip from an anonymous person “from Egyptian origin” that a young teenage boy from Egypt was in trouble and that if he may get arrested because of fabricated accusations back in Cairo. I do not have any doubt that ISEF knew all about what happened to Assem when he was in Cairo already.
Abdullah met with some Egyptians and Arabs as well as it seems who convinced him to stay. The final straw was in LAX airport was when Assem decided to stay and the supervisors refused to give him his passport in order to make him look like an illegal immigrant but it did not work.
Abdullah spoke to Al Jazeera Mubshar Misr TV channel saying that he would not return back because he was afraid of detention.

Abdullah Assem : Afraid of detention in Egypt

Of course you can imagine the reaction of the Pro-El-Sisi supporters after knowing that that ungrateful  Muslim brotherhood criminal teenage recorded with Al Jazeera.
The Pro-ElSisi and Pro-Police state supporters are attacking him madly. TV host Lamees El-Hadidy told him that he would never come back to Egypt and that Egypt did not need because it got millions like him. Of course the Pro-Old Regime TV host forgot that there are millions like him want to leave the country.
Needless to say El-Hadidy had share on twitter today as tweeps launched against her “Fuck Off Lamees” hashtag on twitter.
Later today Assem wrote on his Facebook account this emotional message :

Many people are congratulating me and others leave comments saying that they are happy that I took this decision but honestly I am not happy. I had a different path for my life , I wish to live in Assuit among my people , I wanted to serve my country while I was in Upper Egypt and to be there for the last of life but also this went in vain in second. I took a decision which was extremely difficult to me and if I did not find respectable Egyptians who helped in taking this decision , I would have come back and thrown in some jail where nobody cared about me. Today I saw videos of Rola Kharsa and Lamees El-Hadidy attacking me and my family because I was afraid. Yes I was afraid of returning back and to detained for years or imprisoned by no court or even die for no reason. At the same time I saw youth congratulating me and attacking on twitter as well people mocking me. In the end I want to live as a human.

I can not blame Abdullah Assem at all. What I see in front of me a person who is afraid and took an extremely important decision. For at least two weeks this young man was detained and you can imagine the hell he saw there in his detention.

For me it is better for him to live in self-exile than to be detained and tortured for fabricated charges and then to turn in to a real terrorist who can stomach the unjust society who praises and supports police state. 
Most if not all the people I have met and told them about Assam’s decision in the past 48 hours supported him and said that it was the best for him.

We can not help young scientists like in time of police state and fear in Egypt. True scientific research and innovation need freedom as well funding and let’s be honest Egypt is not truly scientific research or scientists heaven , on the contrary all our truly amazing brilliant scientists are abroad. We have got now scientists like Abdel Atti of KoftaGate.

In better circumstances if not in real world circumstances Abdullah’s research would be funded by the ministry of health as well the ministry of defense. But We live in a surreal world where Assem is arrested and mistreated for two weeks and a charlatan like Abdel Atti is given a Major General Rank.

Abdullah Assem will return insh Allah to Egypt and will help in building this country and hopefully this will be sooner or later.

The girls "Mona , Sara and Hoda" 

By the way three amazing girls won from Egypt won in the Intel ISEF Environmental management competition in the third place. Those girls are Mona El-Sayed , Sara Ezat and Hoda Mamdouh who made researches about vacuum evaporator for Water purification.
Good luck for those girls and good luck for Abdullah.
and Yes he is a human who gets scared for his life and his freedom. He is a true normal human.