Syrian Arrests Are Said to Have Snared Tens of Thousands

JUNE 27, 2012

DAMASCUS, Syria — After Syrian secret police officers spotted Azam at a peaceful demonstration in the heart of this city, he said, they chased him down and dragged him off to prison, where he was tortured during his 40 days in confinement.

“They take people and forget them because there are so many others coming in,” said Azam, who asked to be identified by only his first name. He said he had been detained by air force security officers, members of one of more than a dozen secret police services in Syria. [full story]

Syrians Defy Leaders to Aid Those in Need

MAY 14, 2012

DAMASCUS, Syria — For 48 hours, the two Damascus residents struggled to reach the besieged city of Homs by car, trying to deliver boxes of blood bags so surgeons there could operate on the wounded. But gunfire made the roads impassable.

Finally, they strapped their contraband to their backs and, led by a shepherd through back roads and dirt paths, hiked 65 miles to the city.

As the violence across Syria reaches a treacherous new phase and the numbers of displaced and injured swell, such individual and ad hoc efforts have grown into an increasingly organized underground network of volunteers willing to brave injury and arrest to deliver relief supplies to those trapped, wounded or displaced by the fighting.  [full story]

America’s big mistake on indefinite detention of terror suspects

DEC 28, 2011

The approval of indefinite detention of terror suspects by Congress and Obama maintains the premise that because of exigent circumstances, civil rights and civil liberties must be curbed. This is much like the argument used for decades from Cairo to Damascus.

From Tunis to Athens to Moscow to Wall Street, 2011 has been about dispatching with old ways and rulers, or at the very least, putting them on notice that business as usual is no longer acceptable.

Yet as the year hurtles toward its end, the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) has President Obama and Congress standing in stark contrast to that global momentum by ossifying the mistaken ways of what should be a former era.  [full story]

Unlawful Detention on U.S. Soil

DEC 22, 2011

When his wfie and children arrived to visit Shukri Abu-Baker at the secretive federal prison known as a Communications Management Unit (CMU) in Terre Haute, Indiana, this past fall, they were forced to sit in silence and stare at him through Plexiglass. The twin phones on either side of the partition wouldn’t work. They raised their voices to be able to hear each other, but the guards immediately told them to stop. Their communications, after all, had to be recorded and monitored live by someone in Washington, DC.

The Abu-Bakers had scheduled their visit over a month in advance. The Federal Board of Prisons (BOP) knew they were coming. The family made the fifteen-hour trip from Dallas to Terre Haute in a rented van, spending a total of $2,000 so they could spend eight hours that weekend seeing and talking to Shukri.  [full story]

Turkey’s War on Journalists

DECEMBER 22, 2011

ISTANBUL —When the terrorism trial of jailed Turkish journalists Ahmet Sik and Nedim Sener began in Istanbul on Nov. 22, only a handful of their colleagues — far fewer than expected — gathered in protest outside the courthouse that will decide their fate.

A mosaic of the smiling photographs of many of Turkey’s detained journalists was laid out on the ground at the foot of a swarm of TV tripods, their cameras aiming for a glimpse of the defendants. Sik and Sener’s case is perhaps the most high-profile example of what critics see as the Turkish government’s crackdown on critical voices, which has transformed it into one of the world’s leading jailers of journalists.

[full story]

Democracy 101 For Egypt

SEPT 12, 2011

Tonight’s class at the School for Politics, in the Egyptian Democratic Academy (EDA), focuses on socialism versus liberalism and the meaning of a civil state. The students are men and woman in their 20s or beyond, who’ve arrived at the end of their work or university day to spend the next four hours on a balcony turned classroom. The heat is only occasionally broken by a single rotating fan, and the noise from the traffic below is relentless. But no one seems to mind, and all eyes are on Esraa Nouh, the 25-year-old teacher. She wants to know: what have her students heard about liberalism?  [full story]

Of Mustaches and Megalomaniacs

AUG 28, 2011

In the autumn of 1990, my father, who had been clean-shaven all his life, decided to experiment; he grew a moustache.

Nobody cool in America had a moustache in those days. Magnum PI, which starred Tom Selleck and his moustache, had already been off the air for a few years. Even worse, Saddam Hussein had a moustache. And more than anyone else in suburban Baltimore, where I was stuck in my junior year of high school, my father – with his moustache – looked a lot like Saddam Hussein.  [full story]

David Degner & Alia Malek in Cairo: Permanent Revolution

JULY 20, 2011

On July 8th, Egyptians returned to Tahrir Square to remind the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) that it was they – the people – and not the generals that would be the guardians of the Revolution, even if the fall of Hosni Mubarak was made easier by the military’s abandoning of the Dictator.  As of today, they have not left Tahrir.

Tents shelter folks as they sleep or discuss Egypt’s past, present, and future late into the night and early into the morning.  The canvas surfaces also provide space to display slogans, party and coalition names, and political demands.  The giant canopy overhead shields all from a sun that has been as steadfastly present as the revolutionaries.  [full story]

After Osama bin Laden: In Arab world, America’s troubled post-9/11 legacy lingers

MAY 5, 2011

BEIRUT — The shrug that greeted news of Osama bin Laden’s death here in the Arab world was not surprising given that most across the region never thought Mr. bin Laden belonged to them. To the contrary, bin Laden was seen as an American creation and to some, in recent years, an American phantom, who surfaced to justify American policies and military presence in the region. The details of his recent life, in a comfortable suburban home in a country supposedly allied with the US, were further proof to the more conspiracy-minded here that he was essentially in US witness protection and was merely terminated when he no longer served a purpose.  [full story]

GITMO in the Heartland

MAR 28, 2011

On the evening of May 13, 2008, Jenny Synan waited for a phone call from her husband, Daniel McGowan. An inmate at Sandstone, a federal prison in Minnesota, McGowan was serving a seven-year sentence for participating in two ecologically motivated arsons. It was their second wedding anniversary, their first with him behind bars. So far his incarceration hadn’t stopped him from calling her daily or surprising her with gifts for her birthday, Valentine’s Day and Christmas. But Jenny never got a call from Daniel that night—or the next day, or the next.

It was only days later that Jenny heard from a friend that Daniel was in transit, his destination Marion, Illinois. She quickly researched Marion and learned that it housed both a minimum- and a medium-security facility. Daniel, however, was classified as a low-security prisoner, a designation between minimum and medium. Even though he had a perfect record at Sandstone and had been recommended for a transfer to a prison closer to home, Jenny still didn’t think it was likely that Daniel would be stepped down to minimum security. But it made no sense that he would be moved up to medium security.  [full story]