Egyptian journo who posted ‘police torture videos’ in hiding fearing Mubarak retribution
By ANIFriday, February 4, 2011
CAIRO - Wael Abbas, a well-known Egyptian journalist who had posted hundreds of terrifying videos of police abuse on the web, is reportedly ‘playing hide and seek’ with President Hosni Mubarak’s supporters and security agencies to stay safe and out of their reach.
In the midst of the ongoing violence in the country, Abbas is worried about his role in publicizing police abuses and refuses to talk on the phone for more than a minute, ABC News reports.
“I’m moving around. I’m trying to get to a safe place. All my friends have been arrested. I might have to try to get out of the country. I’m afraid for my life. I need to figure out what I’m going to do and where I’m going to go,” Abbas said from an undisclosed location.
Abbas has been reportedly posting police torture videos on his blog misrdigital.com since February 2005. His latest post on January 26 shows gory images of a young protestor’s dead body, who was shot in the abdomen, in a hospital near the Suez Canal. The footage of the video also showed a nurse screaming into a phone that more wounded were brought to the hospital.
According to leaked cables by Wikileaks, Human Rights groups had earlier condemned torture within Egypt’s police agencies, saying that suspects sent to Cairo under the “extraordinary rendition” program were tortured in the name of interrogation.
The 2008 secret US cable released by WikiLeaks appears to appreciate an “influential blogger and human rights activist”, for his contributions in surfacing the incidents, adding: “We want to do everything we can to assist him in exposing police abuse. XXXXXXXXXXXXX’ post of a video showing two policemen sodomizing a bus driver was used as the main evidence to convict the officers in November 2007.”
The unnamed “prominent Egyptian blogger” discussed in the cable had urged the US government to help him in getting Google to restore two videos to his YouTube account-videos showing a man allegedly shot by police and another of a woman being tortured, the report said. (ANI)
