Patrick Kingsley
in Cairo
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It is Egypt’s version of the Watergate scandal: a series of recordings that implicate a president – in this case, former army chief Abdel Fatah al-Sisi – and his staff in a series of wrongdoings. Or at least it would be, if it could be proved that the #SisiLeaks, as they’re known online, came from Sisi’s office. And if many people in Egypt cared.
On the face of it, people should care. The leaked conversations have been released online in dribs and drabs over the past few months by an Islamist channel in Turkey, perhaps dampening their impact. But if taken in their entirety, and if true – the government denies it – they offer a damning vision of a corrupt cabal at the head of the Egyptian regime.
Allegedly mostly recorded in the office of Sisi’s chief of staff during the first half of 2014, they purport to offer an unusually rich account of how his regime wields dangerous and unconstitutional power over the country’s judicial system and its media, and which had a secret hand in the nominally grassroots campaign to unseat ex-president Mohamed Morsi.
Judicial interferenceThe first leak, and arguably the most incriminating, suggested that four men close to Sisi colluded to falsify parts of the case against Morsi. In February 2014, when the tape was allegedly made, it seemed that one of Morsi’s several trials would collapse if it was revealed that, following his overthrow, he had been detained in a military jail, rather than a civil one.
Faced with this possibility, the tape suggests that the four men – allegedly Sisi’s chief of staff, General Abbas Kamel; an assistant defence minister, General Mamdouh Shahin; the head of the navy, Admiral Osama el-Guindy; and Egypt’s police chief, Mohamed Ibrahim – secretly and retroactively gave the police nominal jurisdiction over part of the navy base in which Morsi had been held.
In a second leak, the man alleged to be Shahin promises Kamel that he will interfere in the trial of the son of a military colleague, a young police officer accused of gassing to death 37 prisoners inside a police truck. The policeman waslater acquitted.
Secret bank transfersIn most of the recordings, Sisi’s involvement is only implied. If the tapes are to be believed, his aide, Abbas Kamel – in whose office the recordings seem to have been made – does Sisi’s talking for him. But in one recording, released this February, a man said to be Sisi himself can be heard asking for Saudi Arabia to deposit $10bn directly into the Egyptian army’s coffers, circumventing the Egyptian central bank.
“We need 10 [billion] to be deposited in the army’s account,” the voice says. “These 10, when we succeed, will be used for what? For the state. We want another 10 like them from the UAE and we want from Kuwait another 10 like them.”
Sisi has largely stayed quiet about the leaks; this recording prompted a rare response. But rather than address the secret bank transfer, Sisi focused on another part of the recording – that in which he mocks his Gulf donors, on whose generosity Egypt’s economy largely depends. He denied he would ever insult anyone, especially the Saudis.
Media meddlingSince Sisi’s overthrow of Morsi, most of Egypt’s media has largely toed the government line. One leak suggests this did not happen by chance. In it, Kamel orders Sisi’s media liaison, Colonel Ahmad Ali, to call a group of nominally independent private talkshow hosts – “our people in the media” – and give them lines to say on air. Kamel wants them to create the impression that Sisi did so only very reluctantly, at the request of the Egyptian people.
But while this was indeed a common theme in the media at the time, one of the dozen mouthpieces outed in the leak claims he didn’t need to be told to argue in Sisi’s favour. “Defending Sisi during that phase is not an accusation but an honour and a national duty,” said Wael Ebrashy, a well-known broadcaster. “I have beliefs and whoever has beliefs doesn’t need orders.”
Conspiring against MorsiSisi and his supporters have always stressed that he overthrew Morsi at the request of the people, and that Morsi’s removal constituted a revolution, not a coup. Sisi argued he played no prior role in fomenting unrest – let alone inTamarod, the nominally grassroots campaign that organised protests against his predecessor.
But the most recent leak, and potentially the most damning to his myth, alleges otherwise. Seemingly recorded in June 2013, Kamel once again crops up, this time to ask Sisi’s then-deputy, General Sedki Sobhy – his successor as army chief – to take some money from Tamarod’s account. “Sir,” Kamel says, “we will need 200 [thousand Egyptian pounds] tomorrow from Tamarod’s account, you know, the part from the UAE, which they transferred.”
Asked to comment on the implications of the leaks, the army’s current spokesman referred the Guardian to the presidency, who did not respond.
No one knows who made the tapes. Theories range from a Morsi sympathiser inside Kamel’s office, a foreign spy, or a disgruntled member of Sisi’s own security apparatus. But whoever the source is, expert voice analysts in Britain believe that at least some of the recordings are genuine.
JP French Associates, York-based speech experts who frequently provide evidence in British court cases, listened to Shahin’s discussions of Morsi’s prisons at the request of British lawyers for Morsi’s political party. In two reports seen by the Guardian, they concluded that there were “no indications” the recordings had been fabricated, and that “the evidence provides strong support for the view that the questioned speaker is Mr Mamdouh Shahin”.
Analysis of Google Earth images also suggests that the naval base in which Morsi was held did change in the manner in which Shahin is alleged to have described.
In Egypt, there is more scepticism, but the recordings have become part of the political conversation and there is some acknowledgement that they might be real. “Everyone records during a time of chaos,” admitted even the grand old man of Egyptian journalism, Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, a Sisi supporter.
“They are fabricating and faking the voices,” said one prominent TV host,Ahmed Moussa, another of those mentioned as a Sisi mouthpiece, “because there are big international institutions working with those people and providing them with the highest level of technology.”Nevertheless, the leaks have neither brought down the government not threaten to. This is partly due to who is broadcasting them. The recordings are circulated by Mekameleen, a Turkey-based Islamist television channel whose allegiances make it, for many pro-regime Egyptians, a less-than-credible source.
Real or not, many Egyptians may also be neither surprised nor bothered by their content. “Believe it or not, no one is upset about them,” said another talkshow host, Ibrahim Eissa, late last year. “In their opinion, [Morsi’s] Muslim Brotherhood is a gang of terrorists and there is nothing wrong with detaining Morsi.”
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