By Robert Fisk
"Now here's a weird story from Cairo. Or rather from Geneva. Or wherever ex-Colonel Mohamed el-Ghanem, formerly a senior officer in the Egyptian interior ministry, happens to be. Just over nine years ago, when we met behind the old Marriott Hotel on the Nile, he had been newly fired by his Egyptian spookmasters. And he was having a little problem. Every time he went to Cairo airport for an international flight, the cops put an exit stamp in his passport – then told him he wasn't allowed to leave......
An unlikely whistleblower, you may say. But he was furious at Egyptian government corruption, nepotism, fraudulent charges against Egyptian journalists, torture in Egyptian jails, human rights abuses – even the unfair treatment of Christian Coptic Egyptians when they wanted to build a church in majority Muslim Egypt. Can you ask Amnesty for help, he pleaded with me?
I published a long report on his campaign, along with his photograph. This appeared to be one brave man.......
The general again called me up in Beirut in 2003 to say that the Swiss secret police were trying to force him to penetrate al-Qa'ida and Switzerland's Arab community, that he had refused – and that the Swiss secret police were threatening him.....
Then last year, el-Ghanem's brother Ali rang me up in Beirut from his home in Washington DC to tell me that Mohamed el-Ghanem had disappeared. He was being held, he claimed, in a Swiss prison, without any contact with his family or friends......
....Why on earth is el-Ghanem being held? When I met him in Cairo, he was campaigning for Christian Copts to have equal rights with Muslims. Is this really the man who would write the tract I've quoted above? And the Swiss have denied his disappearance.
So why is he locked up in Geneva? If he's imprisoned incommunicado and can't talk to anyone, then he surely has disappeared......."
"Now here's a weird story from Cairo. Or rather from Geneva. Or wherever ex-Colonel Mohamed el-Ghanem, formerly a senior officer in the Egyptian interior ministry, happens to be. Just over nine years ago, when we met behind the old Marriott Hotel on the Nile, he had been newly fired by his Egyptian spookmasters. And he was having a little problem. Every time he went to Cairo airport for an international flight, the cops put an exit stamp in his passport – then told him he wasn't allowed to leave......
An unlikely whistleblower, you may say. But he was furious at Egyptian government corruption, nepotism, fraudulent charges against Egyptian journalists, torture in Egyptian jails, human rights abuses – even the unfair treatment of Christian Coptic Egyptians when they wanted to build a church in majority Muslim Egypt. Can you ask Amnesty for help, he pleaded with me?
I published a long report on his campaign, along with his photograph. This appeared to be one brave man.......
The general again called me up in Beirut in 2003 to say that the Swiss secret police were trying to force him to penetrate al-Qa'ida and Switzerland's Arab community, that he had refused – and that the Swiss secret police were threatening him.....
Then last year, el-Ghanem's brother Ali rang me up in Beirut from his home in Washington DC to tell me that Mohamed el-Ghanem had disappeared. He was being held, he claimed, in a Swiss prison, without any contact with his family or friends......
....Why on earth is el-Ghanem being held? When I met him in Cairo, he was campaigning for Christian Copts to have equal rights with Muslims. Is this really the man who would write the tract I've quoted above? And the Swiss have denied his disappearance.
So why is he locked up in Geneva? If he's imprisoned incommunicado and can't talk to anyone, then he surely has disappeared......."
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