Move over, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh -- another Dubai murder made the headlines today: Egypt's Court of Cassation ordered a retrial for Hisham Talaat Mustafa, the billionaire businessman accused of killing Lebanese pop star Suzanne Tamim in Dubai in 2008.
Mustafa was sentenced to death in May, after a Cairo court found him guilty of paying a retired Egyptian police officer US$2 million to kill Tamim, his former lover. Prosecutors said Mustafa had Tamim killed after she refused to marry him.
A follow-up to my earlier post on the ElBaradei campaign and political reform: Issandr El Amrani was kind enough to respond via e-mail, and asked if I would post his response here. It's copied in full after the jump.
Issandr El Amrani has a thoughtful essay on his blog about the potential impact of a Mohamed ElBaradei presidential campaign in Egypt. I agree with most of his points -- particularly his observation that some of the ElBaradei criticism is "cynicism, a position that is hardly constructive and offers no solutions" -- but I want to highlight one item that concerns me.
Furthermore, ElBaradei's pseudo-candidacy may have already forced one alternative to a Gamal candidacy in 2011, if this report (عربي) that Hosni Mubarak is likely to run again in 2011 is to be believed.
This "Hosni will run again" talk is catching on: Al-Quds Al-Arabi this morning quotes unnamed Egyptian sources (عربي) who say Hosni will almost certainly run again next year, and will announce his decision publicly after parliamentary elections this autumn.
Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak is in for a year of rough economic news, but at least he got a good photo op (عربي) with the Egyptian football team after their African Cup of Nations win, right? Hosni and the Pharaohs. There's a joke in there somewhere. (You can also see Gamal Mubarak standing in the back of the photo.)
Al-Ahram doesn't miss an opportunity to take a shot at the Algerians: It faults the Algerian media for publishing "fabricated news" about the Egyptian team.
Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak said in an interview that any candidate "who can bring benefit to Egypt and its people" can take part in the 2011 election.
Mubarak did the interview with the official Egyptian police magazine (in honor of Police Day). I can't find the interview online, but Al-Masry Al-Youm (عربي) and Al-Ahram (عربي) both summarize the highlights. The long-serving Mubarak pledged "free and fair" elections that reflect the will of voters.
Coptic-Muslim violence continues to flare around Nag Hammadi, the site of Wednesday's Christmas Eve drive-by shooting. Reuters reports that Muslims and Copts have set fire to each others' stores and homes in the villages surrounding Nag Hammadi. The fires injured six people, and police have questioned more than 40 in connection with the arsons.
The Jordanian newspaper ad-Dustour reports (عربي) that thousands of Egyptian soldiers have been deployed in Qena province to try to keep the peace.
Hafiz, commenting on yesterday's post about a possible sixth term for Hosni Mubarak, asks a good question: "Where does Alaa Mubarak fit into all this?"
Alaa, for the uninitiated, is Hosni's elder son. He keeps a much lower public profile than his younger brother, Gamal Mubarak -- but he made headlines recently when he spoke out against the violence against Egyptians in Algiers and Khartoum that followed the Egyptian football team's World Cup qualifier defeat.
Coincidentally enough, he also made the newspaper today: The Angry Arab flags this photo (h/t Arabist) from Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, which shows Alaa Mubarak (in white, front row, far left) praying in Mecca with Saudi Arabia's Prince Faisal and Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir.
Not a huge deal, but interesting nonetheless...
Issandr Amrani, better known around here as The Arabist, has a short piece in Foreign Policy about the "ticking time bomb" that is Egyptian presidential succession. Amrani says the central question is whether Gamal Mubarak is overthrown by a coup -- an analysis we agree with -- and then makes this point:
Bad as this all may seem, the alternative could be even uglier: that [Hosni] Mubarak will hang on to power, run for a sixth term in 2011, and go on ruling the country into advanced age.
Khalid al-Shami, a London-based journalist for Al-Quds Al-Arabi, made a similar point (عربي) over the weekend.
The National Democratic Party's sixth annual conference ended, predictably, without any decision on who will replace Mubarak. The party has two years until the election, and you can imagine the NDP leadership is in no hurry to announce what will surely be an unpopular candidate.
The NDP did find some time to bash the Muslim Brotherhood, though, according to Bikya Masr, which reports that two members of parliament urged the government to confiscate the Brotherhood's funds.
Mohammed Mahdi Akef, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, tells Reuters that his group will not field a candidate for the 2011 presidential election.
Boursa Exchange catches the news that Gamal Mubarak will deliver a speech at the Arab Global Forum in Washington in December.
Anything labelled "global forum" is destined to be a dull affair: overcooked chicken, schmoozing with businessmen and politicians, interminable speeches. The real question is what else Gamal plans to do -- who else he plans to meet -- while he's in Washington.
In other Gamal news: I read something yesterday in Al-Quds Al-Arabi -- the link seems to be broken today, sorry -- about the younger Mubarak embarking on a "rural tour" around middle and upper Egypt. He's been trying to boost his populist bona fides for months now. (But he's still not officially planning to run for president! Really!)
The National Democratic Party kicks off its sixth annual conference on Saturday. The party is expected to choose a new transport minister (عربي), to replace the recently-departed Mohammed Mansour. Gamal is also expected to accept "a high-profile role" within the party, according to the speculation in the Times of London.
Ayman Nour is heading a coalition of Egyptian opposition groups that don't want to see Gamal Mubarak take over when Hosni Mubarak steps down.
I had coffee with an Egyptian dissident in DC a few weeks ago, and he speculated that Hosni doesn't really want his son in office, either. This dissident thinks the military would forcibly overthrow Gamal. Don't know if he's right, but the army is definitely the big wild card in Egyptian succession. There hasn't been a civilian president since the revolution, after all.
Running out the door, so take a look at these links and talk amongst yourselves...
Egypt's Wafd party wants Mohamed ElBaradei to run for president in 2011. I don't know what kind of politician he'd make, but he'd definitely be more popular than Gamal Mubarak.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak granted an interview in Cairo with PBS' Charlie Rose. As the two sit in the splendor of Mubarak's palace in Heliopolis, let's see if Rose asks the probing questions we all want to hear.
Earlier this month we puzzled over why Pope Shenouda III, the head of the Coptic church in Egypt, issued a public statement in support of Gamal Mubarak's candidacy for president.
Cameel Haleem, the president of the Coptic Assembly of America, offered some thoughts on this after today's Egyptian coalition press conference. He said Copts are afraid that the Muslim Brotherhood is the only alternative to Gamal.
The Coptic people, as you know, they're going for Gamal Mubarak, and this is because of what the Muslim Brothers have done over the last 20 years.
Mubarak put himself on one side, he put the brothers on the other... the Muslim Brothers have fell into the trick. They went with this radical thinking... this very strict... people in Egypt didn't want that. So they're going for Gamal Mubarak.
Haleem said Copts felt backed "into a corner" and asked, rhetorically, who they were supposed to support.
Hosni Mubarak likes to paint himself as a source of stability in the Middle East. Sure, he's an authoritarian ruler who refuses to allow free elections and routinely violates the human rights of his citizens. But successive American presidents have viewed him as a moderating force in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a bulwark against Islamism in his own country -- a useful dictator, in other words.
But a coalition of Egyptian human rights groups is trying to rebrand Mubarak: shining a light on his human rights abuses, and arguing that "the pharaoh" strengthens Egyptian extremists by ignoring economic development and trampling democracy.
Al-Jazeera English has a report online about those rumors that the Muslim Brotherhood struck a deal with the NDP. (The Brotherhood will allegedly back Gamal Mubarak's presidential bid and withdraw its parliamentary candidates; in exchange, the regime will end its crackdown.)
The Brotherhood says the rumors are bogus. And a newspaper editor close to Gamal Mubarak says the whole thing is a publicity stunt staged by the Brotherhood.
I still don't see any reason why the Brotherhood would make this kind of deal with the regime; it would only weaken the group's already weak hand.
A bleg: I was busy analyzing Richard Holbrooke's talk yesterday and I missed Gamal Mubarak's online chat. My priorities are out of whack, I know. Does anyone know where I can find a transcript, preferably in Arabic?
The National's story about the forum talks a lot about the concept, and about the slick presentation, but it's pretty light on detail about what Mubarak actually said.
It sounds like the forum focused mostly on economic problems. That makes sense, both because those issues are critical to young Egyptians, and because Gamal -- with his MBA and his banking experience -- is trying to position himself as Egypt's best hope for economic development.
The topics touched on a laundry list of Egyptian woes: the outdated educational curriculum; inequality stemming from the government's ambitious programme of economic reform; fears of declining food subsidies and welfare benefits for the poor and corruption in the highest levels of government.
If you have a link to a transcript, let me know.
Al-Masry Al-Youm had an unintentionally hilarious article the other day called "Mubarak 2.0." It was about how the sclerotic NDP is trying to copy the "Obama model," using modern technology to rebrand itself and reach out to a younger generation.
Now I see Gamal Mubarak plans to host an online forum (عربي) to chat with Egyptians. The forum's Facebook fan page (عربي) says you can submit questions until midnight tonight -- so I gather there will be some pre-screening of the questions. Surprising, I know.
In the category of "things I do not understand," Pope Shenouda III, the head of the Coptic church, has endorsed Gamal Mubarak for Egypt's next president -- even though Gamal is not officially running for office yet (because his dad has not officially announced that he isn't running in 2011).
The Los Angeles Times has details (h/t The Arabist):
"I wish and pray for God to prolong Hosni Mubarak's life, but the presidency issue has got nothing to do with succession," the pope said in an interview with Egyptian satellite channel ON TV. "Most Egyptians love Gamal Mubarak and they will vote for him ahead of any other candidate running against him in elections - that is if they find anyone to run against him."
We'll put aside Shenouda's questionable assertion that "most Egyptians love Gamal." I guess Shenouda is trying to ingratiate himself with the man he thinks will win the election -- but why so early?
Interesting side note: The first comment posted to the LAT article reads, in its entirety, "not gamal not muslim brothers we want Omar suleiman." That's the logo of the Omar Suleiman-for-president Web site we wrote about last month.
