The Daily Blog

Apr 14

Egypt’s Ex-President Mubarak Detained for Investigation.

CAIRO - Egypt’s prosecutor general announced Wednesday the 15-day detention of the country’s former president, pending inquiries into accusations of corruption and abuse of authority in an unprecedented investigation of a former ruler in the Arab world.

The announcement was the latest in a dramatic series of events surrounding the probes against top former regime officials, and came just hours after former President Hosni Mubarak, 82, was hospitalized with heart problems in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Since Mubarak’s ouster on Feb. 11 on a wave of popular protests, Egyptians have been calling for the investigation of their longtime ruler along with that of many members of his government.

A statement from the prosecutor general’s office announcing Mubarak’s detention was posted on the social networking site Facebook early Wednesday. It said the ongoing investigation was into was into allegations of corruption, the squandering of public funds, and the abuse of authority for personal gain.

“The prosecutor general orders the detention of former President Hosni Mubarak and his sons Gamal and Alaa for 15 days pending investigation after the prosecutor general presented them with the current state of its ongoing investigations,” it read.

Just hours earlier, a separate announcement said the ex-president’s two sons were being questioned and detained. It is believed Mubarak will remain in the hospital for his detention.

Most of the top officials of Mubarak’s regime are now being investigated on allegations of corruption and abuse of authority.

The Facebook page was set up as an outreach from the Justice Ministry to the families of those killed and injured during the 18 days of protests that ousted Mubarak in mid-February.

While the ex-president was in the hospital in Sharm el-Sheikh, where he has been living since being removed from power, his sons were taken for questioning to the nearby courthouse by prosecutors from Cairo.

Late Tuesday, an angry crowd of 2,000 people had gathered outside the hospital, demanding the sons be arrested. Then, in the early hours Wednesday, head of provincial security in the South Sinai told the crowd that Gamal and his businessman brother Alaa would be detained.

“Brothers, whatever you wanted, you have got … 15 days,” said Maj. Gen. Mohammed el-Khatib, as the crowd erupted in cheers.

As a police van with drawn curtains took away the two brothers, the crowd pelted it with water bottles, stones and their flip-flops, a sign of disrespect in the Arab world.

The increasing role of Gamal Mubarak in the government over the last decade and the belief that he might succeed his father helped galvanize Egypt’s protest movement.

About 800 people are estimated to have been killed during the protests as police opened fire and cracked down on the crowds. Authorities are now investigating government officials for their role in ordering the violence.

Gamal is also seen as the architect of Egypt’s privatization program and economic liberalization, which has brought in billions in foreign investment but has also widened the gap between rich and poor.

Many of his close associates were billionaires and held top positions in the ruling party and the government. There are allegations that they used their positions for personal gain.

Immediately after Mubarak’s hospitalization and in a sign that his ailment might not be very serious, however, Justice Minister Mohammed el-Guindi said he was then questioned in his hospital suite for his role in the violence against protesters.

The investigation into corruption charges would be carried out later by the Justice Ministry’s anti-corruption department, he added.

The protest movement that deposed Mubarak had long pushed for him to be brought to justice for what they say are decades of abuse.

The protesters had criticized the army, which took over the country after the president was pushed out, for being too close to the old regime and not swiftly bringing Mubarak to trial.

For four days protesters reoccupied parts of Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo and closed it off to traffic. Efforts by the army to evict them Saturday resulted in at least one death and dozens of injuries and raised tensions between the protesters and the country’s military rulers.

The investigations into Mubarak’s sons are expected to mollify the opposition.

On Sunday, Mubarak defended himself in a prerecorded message saying he had not abused his authority, and investigators were welcome to check over his assets.

It was his first address to the people in the two months since he stepped down. Shortly after, the prosecutor general issued a summons for Mubarak to appear for questioning.

Feb 13

Switzerland Freezes Assets Tied to Mubarak.

GENEVA - The Swiss government on Friday froze any assets belonging to former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak or his family in Switzerland.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Lars Knuchel said the order took effect immediately but gave no details on what bank accounts or other assets Mubarak or his family might have in Switzerland.He spoke as pro-democracy demonstrators in Cairo were jubilantly celebrating the announcement that Mubarak has resigned after nearly three decades of authoritarian rule and handed power over to the military.”(The government) wants to avoid any risk of misappropriation of state-owned Egyptian assets,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. It also forbid the sale of any assets, especially real estate holdings.Swiss Finance Minister Widmer-Schlumpf was asked earlier this week by Swiss national TV station SF whether Mubarak or his family had any money in Switzerland.

“We’re in the process of clarifying this and we’ll act appropriately,” she said, adding that the Foreign Ministry was investigating the issue.

At the end of 2009, Egyptian deposits in Swiss bank accounts totaled 3.6 billion Swiss francs (about $3.5 billion), according to the Swiss National Bank.

Feb 12

Mubarak Resigns; Egyptian Streets Erupt in Cheers.

Hosni Mubarak resigned as Egyptian president today and handed control to the military, driven from the top after 30 years of autocratic rule.

Seconds after the nationally televised announcement by Vice President Omar Suleiman, celebrations broke out in Cairo’s central Tahrir Square, ground zero of the protest movement, which was packed with some 250,000 protesters.

“Egypt is free! Egypt is free!” the crowds shouted.

Car horns honked and people waved Egyptian flags, sang the national anthem and danced in conga lines.”The Egyptian people made history today!” Hala Abdel Razik, a retired English teacher, told AOL News’ Sarah Topol in Tahrir Square. “We still have a long way to go to fix things. We have to start all over again. It’s the young people’s role, with the help of older people. We’re open to new scenarios.”

In Washington, President Barack Obama said Egyptians “inspired us” through the “moral force of nonviolence” that changed their nation.

“The people of Egypt have spoken. Their voices have been heard. And Egypt will never be the same,” Obama said.

Nobel Peace laureate and pro-democracy campaigner Mohamed ElBaradei said it was the “greatest” day of his life. “The country has been liberated after decades of repression,” the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said, according to The Associated Press. He said he hoped for a “beautiful” transfer of power.That transition will be overseen by the High Council of the Armed Forces — a group of generals headed by Defense Minister Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, 75 — which is now in charge of the country. In a statement issued hours before Mubarak’s resignation, the council promised that it would support free and fair elections. It also said it would scrap the much-hated emergency laws instituted when Mubarak took power in 1981, which grant police almost unlimited powers of arrest.

It is not yet clear what role, if any, Suleiman will have in the transitional regime.

Many Egyptians are shocked that Mubarak — who is thought to have left Cairo earlier today and headed to his seaside palace at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh — is finally out of their lives.”I can’t believe I’m going to see another president in my lifetime,” Sherif el-Husseiny, a 33-year-old lawyer protesting in Tahrir Square, told Reuters. “I was born during [President Anwar] Sadat’s time but was only 4 when he died.”

The seemingly unmovable president was finally toppled by an uprising that grew from small groups of young activists organizing on the Internet. Google manager Wael Ghonim, 30 — who set up a popular protest page on Facebook and is now seen as one of the revolution’s figureheads — told CNN that he wanted to thank Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for supplying the tools that helped mobilize masses of Egyptians.

The rebellion may have started online, but it soon spread throughout society. Inspired by events in neighboring Tunisia — where a popular uprising ended President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s 23-year-long rule — Egyptians of all ages and classes took to the streets to protest Jan. 25.They expressed their anger over the Mubarak regime’s corruption and brutality, and its failure to create jobs and control soaring inflation. When the police used violence to break up the largely peaceful demonstrations — at least 300 people are believed to have died in clashes over the past month — they became angrier and more determined to overthrow the autocrat.Mubarak desperately tried to cling to power during the 18 days of protest. He offered pro-democracy campaigners numerous concessions, including a promise not to run in elections in September. On Thursday, after word spread that he would resign, he went on national TV and announced he was handing only some of his powers to Suleiman.

But a surge in protests today apparently helped force the military to finally boot the 82-year-old autocrat from office.

More than 1,000 activists besieged the state TV and radio building in Cairo, in an attempt to end its broadcast of round-the-clock pro-Mubarak propaganda. Tahrir Square was crammed with a crowd that rivaled the quarter-million figure of the biggest protests over the past 18 days. Some 100,000 people gathered in the main square of Egypt’s second biggest city, Alexandria.

And, for the first time since demonstrations began, protesters staged rallies outside the president’s many palaces.”What are you waiting for?” one protester yelled at soldiers stationed outside Mubarak’s main residence, Oruba, in northern Cairo, The Associated Press reported this morning. “Did you sign an oath and pledge your allegiance to the president or the people?” shouted another member of the 1,000-strong crowd.

Throughout it all, the military stood by, guarding key pieces of infrastructure but keeping its earlier promise not to fire on protesters. When it became clear that the armed forces had taken over from Mubarak, protesters in Cairo embraced soldiers and had their pictures taken with tank drivers.

Although the future was not known, jubilation ruled for the moment.

“I’m excited, euphoric!” Nirvana Said, a training manager who has camped out in Tahrir Square since Jan. 25, told AOL News’ Topol. “Now that the military controls everything, there will be no people on the square tomorrow. It’s finished!”

Feb 7

Obama Now Backs Gradual Transition in Egypt as Crisis Continues.

With the sands shifting in the crisis in Egypt, the Obama administration on Saturday gave its support to a gradual transition in government to prepare for new elections in September.

The decision to support efforts by Egypt’s vice president, Gen. Omar Suleiman, to forge a compromise with opposition groups was announced by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at a conference of European leaders in Munich, the New York Times reported.

Clinton’s statement was a departure from President Obama’s demands as recently as Friday afternoon calling on the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, to make immediate changes and consider whether he should leave office soon in the face of the 12-day-long popular uprising and violent clashes in his country.

“This takes some time,” Clinton said, explaining that it was important to support Suleiman as he tries to engage opposition groups to end the street protests. “There are certain things that have to be done in order to prepare.”The White House said the president made a number of calls to foreign leaders Saturday. He discussed his concern about the targeting of journalists and human rights groups, and reaffirmed that the government of Egypt has a responsibility to protect the rights of its people and to release immediately those who have been unjustly detained. The president emphasized the importance of an orderly, peaceful transition.

Clinton’s statement suggested that Washington was not insisting that Mubarak leave office first. According to the Times, she said that Mubarak, having announced that he would not seek reelection in September, has in effect taken himself out of the political picture.

The U.S. government’s call for gradual change was supported by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu and other countries represented at the conference.

It appeared that the U.S. and its allies have decided that the best and safest way out of the crisis in Egypt — a tinderbox that threatens to incite unrest in other Middle Eastern nations — is a gradual change in government led by Suleiman. He is a key figure in Egypt’s establishment and has backing from the military.Vice President Biden spoke by phone Saturday with Suleiman and stressed “the need for a concrete reform agenda, a clear timeline, and immediate steps that demonstrate to the public and the opposition that the Egyptian government is committed to reform,” the White House said.

The United States, and the other like-minded governments, are seeking a transition to democratic pluralism that would keep the Muslim Brotherhood from becoming a dominant political force in the post-Mubarak era, according to Carl Bernstein, writing in The Daily Beast Saturday.Obama and Hillary Clinton “have been working toward a solution that would permit him [Mubarak] to stay for a brief period as a powerless, de facto head of state,” Bernstein wrote. “He would remain as such until new mechanisms, and perhaps a new Egyptian constitution, are in place.”

Bernstein said a transition government under Suleiman could amend the constitution, end the state of emergency under which Murabak has ruled since 1981, and propose reforms including rights to assembly, free speech, religious freedom, presidential term limits, and the rules for the next presidential election, set for September.

Meantime, in Cairo, it was not clear whether a gradual transition would satisfy the pro-democracy protest movement which has demanded Mubarak’s overthrow and the creation of a reformist government.

On Saturday, thousands of protesters held forth at Tahrir Square, but with foggy and drizzly weather the crowd seemed smaller than in past days.

Other major developments underlined the combustible situation in Cairo.

An assassination attempt on General Suleiman earlier this week was reported by Fox News and other media outlets but denied by the Egyptian government. Still, Fox News said a motorcade accompanying Suleiman was attacked but the general was not harmed.

In Munich, Secretary of State Clinton took note of the unconfirmed assassination attempt and, separately, an explosion at a gas pipeline in the Sinai Peninsula.

She said it “certainly brings into sharp relief the challenges we are facing as we navigate through this period.”

In possible fallout from the uprising, it was reported by Al Arabiya television and other news media that Mubarak had resigned as head of the national ruling party and that other party leaders had also quit on Saturday, including Mubarak’s son, Gamal. But late Saturday, Al Arabiya retracted the report that President Mubarak had left the party leadership. However, MSNBC confirmed that other party leaders, including Gamal Mubarak, had indeed resigned. The Associated Press also said ruling party leaders had relinquished their posts.

As the uprising ebbs and flows in Cairo, a consensus appears to be building among diplomats, heads of state and other experts that Mubarak should not be pushed out immediately and that gradual change and orderly elections are the best course for moving away from the upheaval that imperils the heart of the Arab world and the security of Israel.

By the end of the day in Cairo, the demonstrators were still in Tahrir Square and Mubarak remained in the presidential palace.

Around the world, protests were called to support the revolt. In the U.S., demonstrations were planned in California and Louisiana. And hundreds gathered in the cold rain in front of the United Nations in New York City to show solidarity with the Egyptian protesters.

Feb 2

Egyptian President Mubarak Says He Won’t Run for New Term.

CAIRO — Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said he will not run for a new term in office in September elections, but rejected demands that he step down immediately and leave the country, vowing to die on Egypt’s soil, in a television address Tuesday after a dramatic day in which a quarter-million protesters called on him to go.

Mubarak said he would serve out the rest of his term working to ensure a “peaceful transfer of power” and carry out amendments to rules on presidential elections.

But the half-way concession - an end to his rule months down the road - was immediately derided by protesters massed in Cairo’s main downtown square.

Watching his speech on a giant TV set up in Tahrir square, protesters booed and waved their shoes over the heads in a sign of contempt. “Go, go, go! We are not leaving until he leaves,” they chanted, and one man screamed, “He doesn’t want to say it, he doesn’t want to say it.”The 82-year-old Mubarak, who has ruled the country for nearly three decades, insisted that his decision not to run had nothing to do with the unprecedented protests that have shaken Egypt the past week. “I tell you in all sincerity, regardless of the current circumstances, I never intended to be a candidate for another term.”

“I will work for the final remaining months of the current term to accomplish the necessary steps for the peaceful transfer of power,” he said.

Mubarak, a former air force commander, resolutely vowed not to flee the country. “This dear nation .. is where I lived, I fought for it and defended its soil, sovereignty and interests. On its soil I will die. History will judge me like it did others.”

His speech came after a visiting envoy of President Barack Obama told Mubarak that his ally the United States sees his presidency at an end. Frank Wisner, a respected former U.S. ambassador to Egypt who is a friend of the Egyptian president, made clear to Mubarak that the U.S “view that his tenure as president is coming to close,” according to an administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the ongoing diplomacy.

Jan 29

Top Egyptian Official Says Mubarak in Control.

CAIRO — Egypt’s parliament speaker says President Hosni Mubarak remains in control of the country despite chaos engulfing the capital and other cities.

Speaker Fathy Surour says: “Matters are in the safe hands of Hosni Mubarak and he will act and you will see these actions.”

Protesters have seized the streets of Cairo, battling police with stones and firebombs, burning down the ruling party headquarters, and defying a night curfew enforced by a military deployment. It was the peak of unrest posing the most dire threat to Mubarak in his three decades of authoritarian rule.The government’s attempts to suppress demonstrations appeared to be swiftly eroding support from the U.S. - suddenly forced to choose between its most important Arab ally and a democratic uprising demanding his ouster. Washington threatened to reduce a $1.5 billion program of foreign aid if Mubarak escalated the use of force.

The protesters were sure to be emboldened by their success in bringing tens of thousands to the streets in defiance of a ban, a large police force, countless canisters of tear gas, and even a nighttime curfew enforced by the first military deployment of the crisis.

Flames rose in cities across Egypt as police cars burned and protesters set the ruling party headquarters in Cairo ablaze. Hundreds of young men tore televisions, fans and stereo equipment from other buildings of the National Democratic Party neighboring the Egyptian Museum, home of King Tutankhamun’s treasures and one of the country’s most popular tourist attractions.Egypt’s national airline halted flights for at least 12 hours and a Cairo Airport official said a number of international airlines had canceled flights to the capital, at least overnight. There were long lines at many supermarkets and employees limited bread sales to 10 rolls per person.

Options appeared to be dwindling for Mubarak, a 82-year-old former air force commander who until this week maintained what looked like rock-solid control of the most populous Arab nation and the cultural heart of the region.

With looting and arson fires rocking the capital, Mubarak seemed faced with the choice between a deadly crack and major concessions to protesters demanding he step down this year and not hand power to his son, Gamal.

The once-unimaginable scenes of anarchy along the Nile played out on television and computer screens from Algiers to Riyadh, two weeks to the day after protesters in Tunisia drove out their autocratic president. Images of the protests in the smaller North African country emboldened Egyptians to launch four straight days of increasingly fearless demonstrations organized over mobile phone, Facebook and Twitter.

The government cut off the Internet and mobile-phone services in Cairo, called the army into the streets and imposed a nationwide night-time curfew. The extreme measures were ignored by tens of thousands of rich, poor and middle-class protesters who united in rage against a regime seen as corrupt, abusive and neglectful of the nearly half of Egypt’s 80 million people who live below the poverty line of $2 a day.

“All these people want to bring down the government. That’s our basic desire,” said protester Wagdy Syed, 30. “They have no morals, no respect, and no good economic sense.”

Mubarak made no public appearance or statement and other senior figures in the regime were also notably absent.