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Mr. President:
Surely you know better. You can not work the streets of south side Chicago and know the likes of Reverend Wright without knowing better. You can not forget – no one forgets being in Chicago that long.
Look, we are not calling on you to actually do anything right now. We are simply asking you to stop doing certain things and it will save money as well. How can you beat that?
Stop the extraordinary rendition. Stop inoculating people, uninvited, in their own countries as you did with the false inoculation deal in Pakistan.
Stop attacking Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Kenya, and so on. It will save money. Honest!
Here is an interview or so with Amy Goodman:
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Rush Transcript
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AMY : As famine and drought grip Somalia in what’s being called the worst humanitarian disaster in the world right now, magazine has revealed the is greatly expanding its covert operations inside Somalia. Following an in-depth, on-the-ground investigation inside
Mogadishu
, the magazine revealed the agency has set up a secret counterterrorism training base at the international airport in Somalia, where it’s training an indigenous Somali force to conduct targeted combat and capture operations against members of Al Shabab, the militant group with close ties to al-Qaeda. has also revealed the is using a secret underground prison in the basement of Somalia’s National Security Agency. While a U.S. official told that the does not run the prison, he acknowledged the pays the salaries of Somali agents. Some of the prisoners in the prison have been snatched on the streets of Nairobi, Kenya, and rendered to Mogadishu.The revelations come as the Joint Special Operations Command, known as We’re joined now by , the national security correspondent for magazine. He has just returned from Mogadishu, Somalia. He’s a longtime correspondent. His story
in this week’s magazine is called "The CIA’s Secret Sites in Somalia."Jeremy, talk about what you found in Somalia. : Well, I traveled to Somalia with Rick Rowley from Big Noise Films. He’s a filmmaker. And we were there for about 10 days. And we were investigating the institution of targeted killing that is increasingly present in the U.S. national security strategy, particularly under President Obama. And when we arrived in Mogadishu, within days, we discovered that the had just finished construction of a pretty massive compound at the in Mogadishu. And the compound, which is not even hidden in plain sight—it’s just in plain sight—looks like a gated community. It has about a dozen buildings inside of it, brand new. It’s a walled compound with guard posts at all of its—at each of its four corners. It’s right on the banks of the Indian Ocean
. And then next to it there are six or eight small hangars. And the also has its own aircraft there.I was able to track down a senior Somali intelligence official and began the process of investigating this facility. And what I discovered is that the is training what was described to me as an indigenous strike force, members of Somalia’s National Security Agency, its intelligence division, to conduct operations in the areas controlled by the Shabab in Mogadishu. And, you know, the situation is very fluid, but the Shabab control a huge portion of Mogadishu. And the internationally recognized government controls about 30 square miles of territory. When I asked a very prominent businessman who works in the port of Mogadishu who controls the rest, he said the Shabab government, and referred to it as such. And everyone says that if the 9,000 troops from Uganda and Burundi that are there as part of the African Union were to pull out, that the Shabab would take over in minutes, if not seconds. And so, we discovered that the was expanding its operations there.But then I also met a man who claimed that he had been held in an underground prison in the basement of the National Security Agency, which is one of the facilities where the has its personnel, and it’s literally behind the presidential palace in Villa Somalia
, which is the semi-fortified area where Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government, the U.S.-backed government, is based. And he described to me that he had seen prisoners inside of this and talked to prisoners inside of this basement dungeon who had been there for 18 months or more. There were people that he described as young boys inside the prison, old men, described infestation of bedbugs and mosquitoes, no windows. Prisoners are never allowed to see the light of day, and people are literally going crazy in the basement of this prison. And he said that he had seen both U.S. and French agents, white men, interrogating prisoners, and that some of the prisoners claimed that they had been snatched in neighboring Kenya and brought, rendered, to Somalia. And so, I started that investigation, and more sources came forward when I was in Mogadishu to describe this and confirmed that personnel and possibly U.S. military intelligence personnel are interrogating prisoners held in that basement facility.We found one man, in particular, the case of one man, in particular, named Hassan, who was a 25- or 26-year-old Kenyan of Somali descent, but he’s a Kenyan citizen, who was snatched from his home in July of 2009. And his lawyers allege that he was rendered to Somalia, and they said that it had all the hallmarks of a U.S. rendition. So I investigated that case, and what I learned—and, in fact, what—I can’t say where the U.S. official worked, because they wouldn’t allow us to report it, but let’s just say a U.S. official very familiar with these operations acknowledged the case of Hassan, said to me directly, "The U.S. did not render him." And I said, "Well, we’re not alleging that the U.S. rendered him. We’re alleging that the Kenyans rendered him." You have to understand, in 2007 alone, the Kenyans rendered 85 —or, excuse me, 85 people from Kenya to Somalia on behalf of the U.S. and other governments, including Ethiopia. So there is a long pattern here of the U.S. using proxy forces such as the Kenyans to do these renditions. So, the U.S. doesn’t have to put them on a plane itself. But the U.S. official acknowledged that the U.S. provided the Kenyans with the intelligence that led to Hassan, quote, "being taken off the streets." So, the U.S. is playing semantics with this. It’s clear that they made it abundantly clear they wanted him removed from the game, and he was swiftly abducted, hooded, taken to Wilson Airport, and then rendered to Mogadishu. This man was identified in an intelligence report, that’s believed to be a U.S. intelligence report, that was leaked by Kenya’s Anti-Terrorism Police Unit—he was identified as "the right-hand man" of Ali Nabhan, who was one of the most wanted suspects regarding East Africa that the U.S. was pursuing. He was wanted for questioning over his alleged connection to the 2002 bombings in Kenya that targeted a hotel and an Israeli aircraft that was parked at the airport in Mombasa. Two months after Hassan was snatched off the streets of Kenya, President Obama authorized his first targeted killing
in Somalia and killed Ali Nabhan, the man that Hassan was allegedly the right-hand man to. So, the U.S. role in that case seems very, very clear.As far as the interrogations go inside of this basement prison, the U.S. official that was made available to me for this story said that the U.S. does not directly interrogate prisoners, we jointly "debrief" suspects with Somali agents present—again, it’s all a semantic game—and insisted that it’s only happened a few times in the past year. : And what is the significance of this? : In January of 2009, President Obama signed a series of executive orders that were intended to end the practices that President Bush and Vice President Cheney had implemented in the that candidate Obama had denounced on the campaign trail: torture, secret prisons, renditions. And Director Leon Panetta
said in April of 2009 that the U.S. was in the process of decommissioning all of its secret prison sites. Two months later, Hassan is rendered to a secret prison in Somalia. : Is it your sense that, for example, the , the International Red Cross, knows about this, is going in and visiting the prisoners? : There’s no Red Cross in Mogadishu. There’s no one in Mogadishu. There’s no—there’s no aid agencies. No one will go there. Prison visits? No, there’s not even a, you know, food distribution program that has any Westerners on the ground. They just—all of the white Westerners are hiding inside of AMISOM’s compound, the African Union compound, and Mogadishu is left to suffer completely. It is the most horrifying scene I have ever seen in my life. The prisoners held there, not only do they not see the Red Cross, they are not ever presented with charges. There is no court system to speak of at all in Mogadishu.And, you know, the U.S. can say—can talk until it’s blue in the face about how this isn’t a secret U.S. prison, and at the same time confirm that they pay the salaries of the people that run those prisons and are running Somalia’s intelligence. It was described to me how the does not trust the Somali government, which is regularly denounced by the U.S. as corrupt and unable to control its own territory. So they literally, every month, the lines up the Somali agents and pays them $200 in cash. So, how is it that you can say, "This isn’t our secret prison
. We’re just there"? And, you know, gets spun by the yesterday, after my story comes out, and they say, "Well, the Somalis assure us that they’re treating the prisoners humanely." You’re paying their salaries. You know, that is using that site, at a minimum. : Jeremy Scahill, you write, "The presence in Mogadishu is part of Washington’s intensifying counterterrorism focus on Somalia, which includes targeted strikes by US Special Operations forces, drone attacks and expanded surveillance operations." : Right. Well, as I said, President Obama has made Somalia and Yemen major focus points of his continuation the Bush-era doctrine that the world is a battlefield and we have the right to kill anyone that we deem to be a terrorist at any time that we want in any country around the world, started his targeted killing operation authorizations, as far as we know, in September of 2009.And just in the past month, there have been a number of U.S. strikes inside of Somalia. There was the June 23rd strike that you mentioned where strikes were conducted against a convoy that allegedly was headed by Shabab members, and then But I have to say, though, that while we can talk about the expanded presence of the and this counterterrorism program, as far as the Somali agents are concerned, it’s been a tremendous failure. The only time that they’ve attempted a targeted operation inside of a Shabab-controlled area in Mogadishu was late last year, and it was described to me as a categorical disaster, where the Somali agents were killed, and they haven’t tried another operation since. So I think that the is certainly operating in what is perhaps the most dangerous and unstable environment that it operates in, and we’re clearly increasing the amount we’re spending on it and the amount of personnel that we’re allocating to it, but to what effect is really unclear. : Jeremy, AP reported this: "A federal judge reacted skeptically [...] to the Obama administration’s request to dismiss a lawsuit by an American citizen who says he was held in Africa for four months and allegedly interrogated more than 30 times by U.S. officials." Amir Mohamed Meshal, a Muslim man living in Tinton Falls, New Jersey, said "he was subjected to unlawful rendition from Kenya to Somalia and Ethiopia carried out at the behest of U.S. officials." : Right. If that case is from 2007, the story there was that the United States backed an Ethiopian invasion of Somalia to unseat a coalition of groups that called themselves the Islamic Courts Union
that had taken control of Mogadishu, defeating the CIA’s warlords, who operated effectively as a death squad. And they brought some semblance of order to Mogadishu. They were ruthless, but they brought order to Mogadishu and were widely seen as the sort of most stable people that had taken power since the regime of Siad Barre was brought down in 1991 and then the Black Hawk Down incident happened. And the U.S., of course, you know, took a position, under the Bush administration, that an Islamic government was not acceptable, and they backed an Ethiopia invasion, and then went in and also did targeted killing operations.So, many began to flee the Ethiopian invasion. And the Kenyans, in particular, along with the Ethiopians, started just mass renditions, where they were snatching people off the streets and then sending them to either Mogadishu or another area of Somalia, where there was a , called Baidoa. I interviewed a former Islamic warlord who tried to kill in 2007. He was then abducted by Americans inside of Somalia and rendered to Ethiopia and held by the Ethiopians for two years. Despite the fact that the U.S. backed this invasion that really radically worsened the situation, the current president of Somalia, , is a former leader of the Islamic Courts Union
, and he now is backed by the United States. So, you know, it all comes full circle. And U.S. policy has, if anything, strengthened the role of Al Shabab, who—they were minor players within this Islamic Courts Union. The U.S. and Ethiopian response made them the premier militants on the block. : We’re going to go to break, then come back and also talk about the famine that is engulfing Somalia, the drought. Jeremy Scahill with us. "The CIA’s Secret Sites in Somalia" is his exposé in magazine this week. Stay with us.[break] : We’re with Jeremy Scahill. In a moment, we’re going to go to Nairobi, Kenya, where we’ll be speaking with a representative of the . But Jeremy Scahill, talk about Warsame. : Well, when Admiral McRaven
, who was the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, appeared before the Senate for his confirmation hearings to become head of U.S. Special Operations Command, he mentioned that the U.S. military was holding certain prisoners near Somalia and Yemen on naval ships. And then, the next week after—this was in July, in early July—the next week after McRaven made that statement, the U.S. announced that it had transferred a Somali man who had been captured in a boat between Yemen and Somalia and taken him back to the United States, to New York, and they charged him with terrorism-related charges. And this has ignited a debate about the Obama administration’s stated policies regarding the legality, or lack of stated policies, regarding the legality of holding prisoners incommunicado, as Warsame was for two months, with no access to lawyers or the Red Cross, and then charging them in U.S. courts. The Center for Constitutional Rights put out a series of questions for the Obama administration to answer about why this is legal and why you’re allowed to hold these kinds of prisoners on naval ships without any access to due process whatsoever, especially if you’re going to then charge them in civilian courts in the United States.The other issue that’s raised by this, though, is the case I’ve been talking about, this Ahmed Abdullahi Hassan. His lawyers are preparing to file a petition in the U.S. alleging that the U.S. is aware of his whereabouts and has access to him in this basement prison in Somalia. And it’s going to be another challenge, not to President Bush, but now to President Obama, on the assertions being made by the executive branch regarding their ability to simply just hold indefinitely anyone that they believe to be a threat. : And how does the so-called war on terror
in Somalia, though President Obama is no longer calling it "the war on terror," fit into the bigger picture of U.S. operations in Yemen, in—well, throughout the area? : Right. Well, I mean, these are the new battlegrounds for President Obama’s interpretation of how to fight the war he dare not call "the war on terror" anymore, although they constantly imitate all of the policies of Bush and take them even further. John Brennan, the President’s top counterterrorism adviser a few weeks ago laid out what he called the new U.S. strategy, which is going to rely less on large conventional forces and occupying nations and more on what he called "surgical targeted strikes" against individual terrorists. And so, the U.S. has been dramatically increasing its involvement in both Yemen and Somalia and has asserted the right to kill people in those countries without coming forward and saying, "This is the law under which we’re doing this." And there’s a lot of questions being raised in the human rights and the civil liberties community about this deafening silence in Congress. Almost no one in Congress will touch this at all. : We’re with Jeremy Scahill, investigative reporter, correspondent, has done a major exposé for magazine on "CIA’s Secret Sites in Somalia."
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Famine in Somalia, Horn of Africa Described as "Worst Humanitarian Disaster in the World"
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has issued an urgent appeal over the crisis in Somalia, where more than 11 million people are in need of life-saving assistance as they face the worst drought in decades. The United Nations describes the Somali drought as the worst in the world, and a top U.N. official, Valerie Amos, urged the world to make the link between and the drought. The extended drought is forcing an estimated 3,000 people a day from Somalia to neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia. We speak to Yves van Loo in Nairobi of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Somalia, who was in Mogadishu just two weeks ago. We also speak to investigative reporterJeremy Scahill
, who recently returned from assignment in Somalia. [includes rush transcript] ,
, national security correspondent for magazine and author of the new article, "The CIA’s Secret Sites in Somalia." He recently returned from Somalia, where he visited camps for residents displaced by the drought. He is the author of the bestselling book .
Africa
Guests: , spokesperson for International Committee of the Red Cross in Somalia , national security correspondent for magazine and author of the new article, "The CIA’s Secret Sites in Somalia." He recently returned from Somalia, where he visited camps for residents displaced by the drought. He is the author of the bestselling book .
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Rush Transcript
This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
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AMY : We turn now to what’s been characterized as the worst in the world: the famine in Somalia and the Horn of Africa. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued an urgent appeal yesterday to respond to the crisis, where more than
11
million people are in need of life-saving assistance as they face the worst drought in decades. Secretary-General Ban said, quote, "The human cost of this crisis is catastrophic. We cannot afford to wait."The extended drought is forcing an estimated 3,000 people a day from Somalia to neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia. U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres
, also issued an urgent appeal earlier this week.ANTÓNIO : I have no doubt that Somalia is today the worst humanitarian disaster that we face in the world. Here in the outskirts of the Somali refugee camp of Dadaab
, we have the poorest of the poor, the most vulnerable of the vulnerable in the world. : For more, we’re joined on the phone by Yves van Loo in Nairobi, Kenya, the spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Somalia. He was just in Mogadishu
two weeks ago.Yves, explain the scope of this catastrophe that is unfolding now in Somalia. : Actually, we get the report from all of the staff still based in Somalia. They’re all speaking about the same, that there is no water, that with the real lack of rain this year, it’s the second agricultural season that is lost for the country. So people are desperately seeking for shelter. They try to escape the drought. They try to escape also the insecurity, because, as you know, Somalia is still facing a war. And people try to avoid to stay too close to the front lines. So we could see, especially in Mogadishu and, as your correspondent mentioned, in neighboring countries like Ethiopia and Kenya, that thousands of people are just gathering to a improvised or structural refugees camp. : How bad is the famine right now, and what is causing it? : What we can see, for the , we are supporting a huge network of therapeutic feeding centers and clinics operated by a partner from the Somalia Red Crescent. What we could see, that for the last three months the admitted children just doubled. We pass—for instance, for this Bay region, in June we got three times more children than the children that were already inside the center. The malnutrition rate just raised up to 11 percent. It is twice the alarm level. So the situation is very, very bad. I mean, it’s a huge effort to be made to feed the population. : I wanted to get your response to the reports that some aid organizations say relief efforts have been hampered in Somalia due to U.S. anti-terrorism laws that bar any person or organization from providing any type of material support, even humanitarian aid, to groups that have ties to Al Shabab, a designated terrorist organization that controls part of Somalia. Groups like Mercy Corps are saying this. Are you finding this, as well? : Well, for us, I mean, the way we’re operating, of course, we do not pass through the authorities. What we do with any authority that is in charge or in control of the territory is, of course, to inform them and ask permission to operate. But then, of course, the operation is conducted exclusively by personnel. So, the assistance that will be provided will be straightly delivered to the beneficiaries. It doesn’t pass through any local structure, any local organization, controlled by any government or any group in charge of a territory. : Yves van Loo, since you are a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Somalia, in our last segment, we were talking with investigative journalist about the secret prison in Mogadishu and wondering whether the ICRC
knows about it and is visiting the prisoners inside? : No, we are not visiting, and we’re not aware of any secret prison there. What I know is that, of course, in Somalia you have secret services, and you have also foreign intervention, like African Union there. So, of course, we suspect that some of the people there belong to intelligence. But now we do not conduct any activities with them. I saw that—I heard your correspondent refer to the arrest and the transfer of Mr. Warsame. But so far, I mean, we—yeah, we’ve been notified by the Department of State, but yeah, we do not have any detention activities so far in Somalia. : Jeremy Scahill? : Yeah, I’m happy to provide you with the location of the secret prison. Just go to where President Sheikh Sharif’s office is, and it’s right behind it in the basement of Somalia’s National Security Agency. And I think that the Red Cross should demand immediate access to this prison from both the United States government and the Somalia , because, according to former prisoners, lawyers and Somali intelligence officials, there are scores of people that have been held without charge in this basement, some of them, as far as we can document, for more than 18 months. And the Red Cross should be insisting on access to this prison, which is actually within the TFG’s, the Somali government’s compound in Villa Somalia
. : OK. So, just thank you for the information. What I suggest is maybe offline that you give me your contact. Then we can speak further on this matter. But I think—I mean, with no information from my side, it’s difficult to make any comment on that. But that’s very interesting. : Jeremy Scahill, you were also in the camps. Can you talk about the effect of the famine and what you saw? You are just back also from Somalia. : Yeah, I mean, we also traveled down to the Kenya-Somalia border, and it is the largest refugee camp in the world at Dadaab
, and—the one operated by the United Nations. It was originally built in 1991 for about 90,000 people. There are now almost 400,000 people that are in that camp. And then there are tens of thousands of others who have set up their own housing outside of the camp and are hoping to make their way into the camp. I mean, it’s an utterly horrifying situation.And part of what’s happening is that there is a Somalia crisis industry that is profiting from this, largely based in Nairobi, people with large salaries and maids and nannies, living in nice apartments in Nairobi, that never step foot anywhere inside of Mogadishu
, except within the protected confines of the African Union or U.N. presence there near the airport. And, I mean, we were in the only trauma hospital in Mogadishu, and they said there are—they have four surgeons there. They get a lot of support from the Red Cross, but only in supplies. There are no—there is no international presence that can be seen, whatsoever, in the vast majority of Mogadishu, and that is a part of the problem.And, you know, the Shabab areas are the most desperately affected in terms of the civilian consequences of what we saw, and that was an indiscriminate shelling by the African Union forces, armed and backed by the United States, launching missiles from their base miles away from Bakara Market
, randomly just hitting buildings there. We saw bodies buried, decapitations that had happened, communities that reeked of rotting human flesh, wastelands where animals roam eating trash. And there’s nothing. There’s no one there. There are no doctors in the Shabab-controlled area. One doctor that we talked to was kidnapped by the Shabab and taken to their area to train nurses. And he told us, "I would have gone there if they had asked me, but they snatched me off the streets and took me there and forced me to train nurses." What’s desperately needed is someone to stand up and say, "We will take the risk to go in there and bring humanitarian aid, regardless of what governments tell us not to do it." : Yves van Loo, spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross, we just got this news from Al Jazeera English
. "The UN World Food Programme would welcome any assistance from the hardline Muslim group al-Shabab to help avert a humanitarian disaster in the Horn of Africa, a spokesman [has] told Al Jazeera."Al-Shabab has [already] lifted a ban on humanitarian agencies supplying food aid to millions of citizens [amid] one of the region’s worst droughts in 60 years."How significant is this? And what are you calling for the world to do now for and with Somalia? : What is clear is that the Somali population has been suffering for the last 20 years. You know, it’s the political instability, this war. They have drought and flooding. So, of course, any organization that is coming to the country will be welcome to support the existing organizations already working in the country. The needs are huge. I mean, it’s difficult really to give figures because, you know—because of insecurity, it’s very difficult to conduct large assessments.I wanted also to react to what your correspondent just stated about doctors. I mentioned in the beginning of my intervention that we are supporting also a network of clinics from the Somalia Red Crescent
and some hospital. And actually, there are some doctors also in the Al Shabab-controlled areas. And we support also those facilities. : And on your last point, the Shabab says they will allow the food through and the humanitarian groups to operate. : Yeah, it’s good things. I mean, it’s a bit—the point is that, I guess, that, like the : Well, I want to thank you, Yves van Loo, spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Somalia, just back from Mogadishu, speaking to us from Nairobi, Kenya. And Jeremy Scahill, who has an exposé
in this week’s magazine called, national security correspondent for . It’s called "The CIA’s Secret Sites in Somalia." Jeremy Scahill also a correspondent. Thanks. I look forward to your next report, Jeremy, and we’ll link to for this one.
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. Red Cross Provided with Location of Secret Somali Prison Used by
Democracy Now! correspondent and The Nation investigative journalistJeremy Scahill
provides an International Committee of the Red Cross spokesperson with the location of the secret prison used by the he uncovered in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, which the Red Cross says it didn’t know existed. "There are scores of people that have been held without charge in this basement, some of them, as far as we can document, for more than 18 months," Scahill says. "The Red Cross should be insisting on access to this prison, which is actually within [a] Somali government compound." [includes rush transcript] ,
, national security correspondent for magazine and author of the new article, "The CIA’s Secret Sites in Somalia." He recently returned from Somalia. He is the author of the bestselling book .
Africa
Guests: , spokesperson for International Committee of the Red Cross in Somalia , national security correspondent for magazine and author of the new article, "The CIA’s Secret Sites in Somalia." He recently returned from Somalia. He is the author of the bestselling book .
Related stories
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Rush Transcript
This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
- , , , More...
Related Links
AMY : Yves van Loo, since you are a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Somalia, in our last segment, we were talking with investigative journalist
Jeremy Scahill
about the secret prison in Mogadishu and wondering whether the knows about it and is visiting the prisoners inside? : No, we are not visiting, and we’re not aware of any secret prison there. What I know is that, of course, in Somalia you have secret services, and you have also foreign intervention, like African Union there. So, of course, we suspect that some of the people there belong to intelligence. But now we do not conduct any activities with them. I saw that—I heard your correspondent refer to the arrest and the transfer of Mr. Warsame. But so far, I mean, we—yeah, we’ve been notified by the Department of State, but yeah, we do not have any detention activities so far in Somalia. : Jeremy Scahill? : Yeah, I’m happy to provide you with the location of the secret prison. Just go to where President Sheikh Sharif’s office is, and it’s right behind it in the basement of Somalia’s National Security Agency. And I think that the Red Cross should demand immediate access to this prison from both the United States government and the Somalia Transitional Federal Government, because, according to former prisoners, lawyers and Somali intelligence officials, there are scores of people that have been held without charge in this basement, some of them, as far as we can document, for more than 18 months. And the Red Cross should be insisting on access to this prison, which is actually within the TFG’s, the Somali government’s compound in Villa Somalia
. : OK. So, just thank you for the information. What I suggest is maybe offline that you give me your contact. Then we can speak further on this matter. But I think—I mean, with no information from my side, it’s difficult to make any comment on that. But that’s very interesting.
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. What the hell – might as well include this too:
Egyptian Protests Grow amidst Widespread Frustration over Revolution’s Progress
A massive week-long demonstration continues in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in perhaps the largest rallies in the five months since the uprising that led to the fall of former president, Hosni Mubarak. Protests have also been held in the coastal cities of Alexandria and Suez. The protesters are calling for all the demands of the Egyptian revolution to be met, including a wider purge of members of the Mubarak’s regime. Yesterday, 30 men armed with knives and sticks stormed the protesters’ tent camp at the square, wounding six. Egypt’s army has called on protesters to stop the demonstrations, only to draw a large protest in Tahrir last night. Speaking from Cairo, Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous says, “The Egyptian revolution has reached a critical turning point. This is not what people fought for, this is not what people died for, in this revolution. And that’s why people have taken to the streets.” [includes rush transcript] Guest:
Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Democracy Now! correspondent reporting from Cairo, Egypt.
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- Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa on Egypt’s Revolution, His Potential Presidential Candidacy and Middle East Uprisings
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AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to what is happening in Egypt, a massive demonstration once again underway in Tahrir Square in Cairo, perhaps the largest in the last five months since the uprising that led to the fall of the former dictator, Hosni Mubarak. Protests have also been held in coastal cities of Alexandria and Suez.
For nearly a week, Egyptian protesters have camped out in Tahrir. The protesters are calling for all the demands of the Egyptian revolution to be met, including a wider purge of members of Hosni Mubarak’s regime. Several dozen protesters are also continuing a hunger strike, vowing to continue until their demands are met. The protesters dismissed the offer from Prime Minister Essam Sharaf on Monday to reshuffle his cabinet this week.
For more, we go to Cairo, where Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous joins us live. We talked to you last week, Sharif, where this was the beginning of the largest protest since January and February. Talk about what’s happening now.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, Amy, I really think the Egyptian revolution has reached a critical turning point, and we’re seeing—we’re bracing now for a showdown between the Supreme Council of Armed Forces, which has ruled the country since February 11th when Mubarak stepped down, and to the thousands, the tens of thousands of protesters that have taken to the streets across the country.
Tahrir has really—it’s entering the sixth day of a sit-in that’s reminiscent of the one that captured the world’s attention back in January and February. And there’s sit-ins being staged in Alexandria and Suez and Mansoura. And as you said, the heart of the matter really lies in the fact that the basic demands, the very basic demands, of the revolution have gone unfilled, with little indication that there’s a path for any real kind of change, that the calls for justice and accountability for members of the former regime have gone unanswered, that the revolutionary demands—one of the cries, the main cries, was "Bread, freedom and social justice"—have all but been abandoned. And on Friday, as you said, we saw this massive protest take place in Tahrir and across Egypt.
But what really happened since then is that this sit-in has continued to grow in Tahrir. Every day, there are more and more tents. There’s more structures being built. And yesterday, the Supreme Council finally—people have been waiting for them to give any kind of indication that [inaudible] any kind of [inaudible]—they finally spoke yesterday, with a very provocative and dismissive statement saying that Egypt was facing a planned and organized attempt to disrupt the country’s stability. And the general, Mohsen El-Fangary, said the Council—he was wagging his finger while he was doing it, there’s a lot of people are speaking about this—will take any and every action to confront and stop the threats surrounding the country.
So, the response to that last night was a huge turnout in Tahrir. I haven’t seen it that packed since the January and February sit-in that happened. Many, many thousands of people were there last night, and that was a direct response to that statement. And there was a big march that happened on Qasr El-Aini Street to the Council of Ministers, to the parliament, where people—I have never heard calls like this, this widespread, this loud, directly against Tantawi, Field Marshal Tantawi, who ruled—who’s effectively the head of the country right now, calls directly against the Supreme Council.
And one of the other things that really was another blow to the demands of the revolution for economic and social justice, there was the final draft of the 2011 budget was recently released. And in it, in a bid to reduce the deficit in Egypt, there were huge cuts to social spending in Egypt, and a lowering of the proposed minimum wage had been—they had proposed to raise it to 700 pounds a month, which is under $120. That was lowered to about 684 pounds. And so, this came at the—they could have—many argue the deficit could have been reduced by taxing real estate, by introducing a progressive tax. But we’re seeing things that we see in other parts of the world with these austerity [inaudible]. This is not what people fought for, this is not what people died for, in this revolution. And that’s why people have taken to the streets. And they are determined not to leave right now Tahrir. And so, it’s a bit of a tense situation because of what the army said yesterday in its provocative statement.
AMY GOODMAN: And the level of violence and what you fear, Sharif?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, yesterday we saw an attack on the square. There was a group of armed men, some wielding swords, tried to attack the square. They were overcome. Two of them were detained, and one of them was handed over to police, although there was a lot of argument over whether to hand people over to the very institutions that they’re protesting against. There’s a lot of security around the square, a lot of it organized by the April 6 Movement, but a lot of it organized just by the people themselves there. They take shifts in organizing these popular committees, where they pat people down and so forth.
The fear is, is that it is extremely hot in Egypt right now, in summer—
AMY GOODMAN: Five seconds.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And so, the fear is that violence may ensue, but people are determined to stay in the square until demands are met.
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Democracy Now! correspondent, speaking to us from Cairo.
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