Hossam Bahgat detained over an investigation report

Investigative reporter Hossam Bahgat is currently spending the night at the military prosecution after a long day where he was interrogated allegedly over an investigative report he made in Mada Masr last month.

Hossam Bahgat

Oh yes, the renowned former human rights activist and founder of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal rights “EIPR” can face a military trial over his investigative report.

It started earlier this morning when Mada Masr announced that its contributor and investigative reporter Hossam Bahgat was summoned to the military intelligence early morning.

According to the independent News website, Egypt’s military intelligence summoned Bahgat officially on Thursday at his official registered address in Alexandria.

Today, he went there to see what they wanted.
For nearly 7 or 8 hours, nobody knew anything but everyone knew what it was about.
It was about his in-depth investigative report published on 14 October 2015 about “ the secret military trial of 26 officers for allegedly a coup plotting with the Muslim Brotherhood”. You read it right.
Hossam Bahgat investigated a small BBC Arabic News and other news website speaking about that military trial with names and dates.

Bahgat investigated and brought to us the story with names and photos as well dates and testimonies from the relatives of those officers allegedly accused of plotting a coup.

Thinking about it now, it was one hell of a daring decision to publish this report by Bahgat’s name in the byline like that in Mada Masr as we are speaking about Egypt 2015 and not Egypt 2011 after all.
After nearly 8 hours, founder of Mada Masr and her editor-in-chief Lina Attalah got a very short call from Bahgat telling her that he was referred to military prosecution with nothing official or clear about the reasons behind that.

As per a phone call from @hossambahgat, he is accused, moved to military prosecution, awaiting investigator. Charges remain unclear.

— Lina Attalah (@Linaattalah) November 8, 2015

In a short time, nearly 25 lawyers attended the investigation with Hossam Bahgat at the military prosecution including a lawyer from Egypt’s journalists syndicate “despite he is not a member in the syndicate” and former Presidential candidate Khaled Ali.

After couple of hours, Hossam Bahgat was officially charged with two charges: Deliberate reporting of false news that harms the national security and publishing rumors that harms the national peace !!
He will  remain in custody till Monday morning so the military prosecution reaches to decision whether to release him or to detain him and refer him to military court heavens forbid.
Heba Morayef, the human rights activist explains what happened to him from a legal perspective.

Couple of words about Sharm El-Sheikh, North Sinai and Terrorism

There are some misconceptions I began to read online about Sharm El-Sheikh and Sinai especially after the Russian flight crash and the British government’s advice to its citizens and Russian evacuation order and they need to be corrected ASAP.

First of all, till this moment we do not have anything official that confirms the Russian Plane was downed by a bomb and the possibility of the MANPAD is out of question by many experts due to the laws of the physics.

From Sharm El-Sheikh 'Asmaa Wagih/Reuters" 

I am not an expert, but I did some work and studies about terrorist and militant attacks in Sinai peninsula so I assume that I know a thing or two about the situation there.

1- The terrorism-infested zone in Sinai is located in the North, in Al-Arish or to be precise in areas like Rafah and Sheikh Zowaid.

Yes, Islamic State-affiliated Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis “ABM” or as they like to call themselves “Sinai province” did several terrorist attacks outside this zone against mostly the security forces in several areas including Cairo, Mansoura and North Coast. But their main focus is in this area.

According to all experts, evidence and what we have on the ground, ABM’s current zone of operations against security forces as well the security forces aka armed forces operations against ABM is in the North of Sinai.

Recently, there are less attacks against security forces than the past, especially that one of its dangerous masterminds “Hisham Al-Ashamawy” has departed it to return back to Al-Qaeda shifting his fight to the West of the country  as well the military operations against the militant group from time to time.

Yet, I believe the current Egyptian administration’s security and military strategy as well political strategy for North Sinai should be changed immediately to have more progressive and more open policies to include the local people of North Sinai to their side.

I fear that the government is not killing terrorism with that "burn-it-all" policies and mass punishment but rather fueling its future.

People in Rafah already lost a huge source of income with the decision of Egyptian armed forces to destroy the tunnels to Gaza and to turn the area into a buffer zone especially there have not been true development economic projects in North Sinai for nearly 30 years.

The people in North Sinai are actually caught between the mistreatment of security forces and the beheadings of ABM if they dare to help the Armed forces against them.

You cannot beat terrorism without long-term political and economic solutions to the people of North Sinai in a nutshell with my all due respect.

People have been tired of saying this during the time of Mubarak when actually the seeds of ABM were planted and grew or even after Mubarak with three different administrations that care less about Sinai or North Sinai.

2-Sharm El-Sheikh is in South Sinai.
Generally, there is a huge difference between North and South Sinai and it is not about the location or the nature , simply the tribes of South Sinai have got economic interests there with all the tourism out there unlike North Sinai tribes that got nothing. It is like a different reality.

And the Russians joined the Sharm El-Sheikh saga

Just from hours ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the suspension of all Russian passenger flights to Egypt until the cause of the Russian plane crash in Sinai is revealed.
He also gave his orders to the Russian government to work on the return of the Russian tourists in

Egypt.

Tourists departing Sharm El-Sheikh airport early
Friday "Reuters" 

In other words, Putin orders the evacuation of Russian tourists from all over the country.
The decision comes hours after the decision of UK and what it caused.
According to Russian media, there are not less than 70,000 Russian tourists in Egypt.
This decision was issued after the meeting of Putin with security and aviation officials in Moscow.
Before that meeting, the head of the Russian Federal Security service called for the suspension of all Russian flights to Egypt.
Of course, a man like him for sure presented what was enough to convince the Russian president to take such decision without talking to the Egyptians.
This is even a bigger blow to the Egyptian government because this is Russia, the so-called Sisi’s faithful friend.
Well, the faithful friend suspended the flights to Egypt not only Sharm El-Sheikh in clear direct words.
Russia is one of the main members in the investigation team when it comes to the Russian Plane crash along with France and Ireland, Egypt and surprisingly Germany.
It turned out that Germany was involved in the investigation by the request of Egypt.
Of course today was one hell of a day in Sharm El-sheikh airport with a lot of drama and scandals of real.
More countries are issuing travel warning about Egypt. We got now UK, France, Russia, Spain, South Korea ,Belgium and Holland.

Regarding Sharm El-Sheikh’s flights suspension

Hours  following the arrival of the Egyptian President to London , the British Government surprised the whole world and Egypt by issuing a warning to its citizens about air flights to Sharm El-Sheikh Russian airliner crash.

The Mirror Front page on Thursday 

after the
According to the statement issued by the UK Foreign & Commonwealth office , “it is advised against all but essential travel by air to Sharm El-Sheikh “ as according to the information the British government got from a range of sources concerning “ The Russian airliner crash”  , there is a significant possibility that crash was caused by an explosive device on board the aircraft.

Britain is also going to send a team to check the security measures in Sharm El-sheikh airport.

And the words “caused by an explosive device on board of the aircraft” were used by foreign government officials finally !!!!!!

This statement does not advise against the travel to Egypt nor to Sinai or Sharm El-Sheikh in general, it only advised against the travel by air which is the only way for Most British people to reach to Sharm El-Sheikh.

Now personally, I know it is a strange thing because officially UK is not part of the investigations led by Egypt and the investigations have not finished yet when it comes to the Black Box.

Egypt is leading the investigations along with Russia “Kogalymavia is a Russian airliner and most of the passengers are Russians”, France “ Because the Plane was an Airbus A-321” and Ireland “The Plane was owned by an Irish company and was leased to the Russian airliner, it is also registered in Ireland”.

Things escalated rapidly when CNN quoted unnamed U.S intelligence officials saying that the intelligence they had suggested that ISIS planted a bomb on the board of the Plane.

The U.S news channels were reporting about this possibility from an early time.
On Sunday, CBS News reported that a “U.S. infrared satellite detected a heat flash over the Sinai at the time the Russian plane went down.” The report was clear that the “The data is still being analyzed in an effort to determine what caused the flash. One possibility is a bomb, but an explosion in a fuel tank or engine as the result of a mechanical failure is also possible.”

It is worth to mention that Islamic State-affiliated/Sinai based-Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis "Sinai province" claimed responsibility for downing the plane without giving any details on how they did it.

US officials told  U.S-based ABC news that they intercepted extremists communications about the airliner crash.

Heavy Rains hit the country : Welcome to Water world

A new heavy rain wave has hit the country and not only Alexandria drowned earlier today once again but also we got governorates like Matrouth , Kafr El-Sheikh , Behaira , Monufia , Gharbia and Giza as recently.
The heavy rains started after the thunderstorm that started on Tuesday.
It began like that.

An amazing shot for thunder in Alexandria by Disha Hisham

It was one hell of a thunderstorm, those photos below were taken in half hour only !!

Alexandria 3rd of Nov. 5:30 PM to 6 PM pic.twitter.com/2S4IyXvcdc

— أبو نضاره (@Isma3ilMoustafa) November 3, 2015

And rains began.

Not less than 18 people were killed today across the country because of that rain wave.
Despite Alexandria is capturing all the media attention yet the situation in Behaira is far worse but there are no cameras to record what is happening there.

Nobody wants to tell us where #Shehata and #Massouny are

On Tuesday , El- Nadeem center for Rehabilitation of victims of violence launched a week-long campaign against forced disappearance in Egypt.
The campaign is called “Stop the Forced disappearance” and it is about the increasing reports of forced disappearance cases  in Egypt for activists, protesters and also normal citizens.
The campaign started with dozens of human rights activists announcing they would have a hunger strike for one day in solidarity with Mrs. Maha Mekaway, the wife of lawyer and Constitution party member Ashraf Shehata who has disappeared since January.

Maha Mekaway and her husband Ashraf Shehata

Mekawy has been on a hunger strike for two weeks.
Mrs. Mekaway knew from several sources that her husband was detained by security forces while the ministry of interior denies that he is detained in the first place.
Unfortunately, human rights activists and social media began to know more about the forced disappearance cases when Esraa El-Taweel, who is a former blogger and freelance photographer disappeared along her two friends Omar and Sohip in June. They were lucky somehow and appeared in detention despite all the hardships they are facing now.
Omar and Sohip are facing a military trial while El-Taweel is still detained for 45 days pending investigations.
During June, I remember that there were many cases of forced disappearances mostly for April 6 Youth members because the political movement dared and called for a strike.
Luckily,those members appeared in police stations and were released later.

When Esraa El-Taweel Cried in court

On Monday, Photographer Esraa El-Taweel made headlines when she appeared in front of the judge who extended her temporary detention for 45 days.

Esraa El-Taweel heading to the judge's panel "Tahrir newspaper" 

The 23-years old student burst into tears in front of the judge, in front of the lawyers and in front of the cameras that captured her most vulnerable moments while crying for her own freedom.

Esraa El-Taweel crying 'El-Tahrir newspaper'

Esraa El-Taweel crying 'El-Tahrir newspaper'

Esraa El-Taweel crying 'El-Tahrir newspaper'

Esraa El-Taweel was forcibly disappeared along her two friends Omar and Sohip in early June and then resurfaced after three weeks later in two different cases.
El-Taweel is accused of belonging to a banned group and sending false news abroad to defame the Egyptian government as well disturbing the society’s peace !!