Egypt: Land of Pyramids, the Sphinx…and Outsourcing?

India’s tech boom has inspired other developing nations to promote themselves as outsourcing destinations. The latest to try to cash in: Egypt.

Egypt seems like an unlikely place for Western companies to send tech work and open call centers, but Tarek El-Sadany, a government official in charge of helping to grow the country’s information-technology industry, says that the country is well positioned to do these tasks-literally. Read more

U.S. citizen stabbed in Cairo tourist area

A U.S. citizen was stabbed and wounded in a popular Cairo tourist area Friday in front of his wife in the second attack on foreigners in the Egyptian capital in less than a week, security sources said.They said the American, a teacher in an English-language school in the coastal city of Alexandria, had been visiting Islamic Cairo, home to the 14th century Khan el-Khalili market, when he was stabbed.

Police arrested a 21-year-old Egyptian over the attack, and security sources said he was mentally ill and had also attacked a policeman. They said the stabbing had no connection to a bombing earlier this week that killed a French tourist nearby.

A bomb placed under a bench killed a French teen-ager on Sunday and wounded at least 24 other people in a crowded square in the same area of Cairo, where tourists shop for trinkets and sit at outdoor cafes. The area is also home to many Islamic monuments.

That blast was the first fatal attack on tourists in Egypt since bombs killed at least 23 people at an Egyptian resort in the Sinai peninsula in 2006.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for either attack. The American who was stabbed suffered light to moderate injuries and was in stable condition, security sources said.

Islamic militants have hit Egypt’s tourist industry in recent years through bomb and shooting attacks, though there had been a lull since 2006.

Attacks on tourists are embarrassing for the government, which tries to project an image of security and stability, but the government has faced increasing domestic discontent in recent months by helping Israel to enforce a blockade on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

 

Wooden sarcophaguses found in tomb

Japanese archaeologists working in Egypt have found four wooden sarcophaguses and associated grave goods which could date back up to 3,300 years, the Egyptian government said on Thursday.The team from Waseda University in Tokyo discovered the anthropomorphic sarcophaguses in a tomb in the Sakkara necropolis, about 25 km (15 miles) south of Cairo, the Supreme Council for Antiquities said in a statement.

Sakkara, the burial ground for the ancient city of Memphis, remains one of the richest sources of Egyptian antiquities. Archaeologists say much remains buried in the sands.

The tomb also contained three wooden Canopic jars, in which ancient Egyptians tried to preserve internal organs, and four boxes for ushabti figures, the miniature statues of servants to serve the dead person in the afterlife, the statement said.

The sarcophaguses did not contain mummies because the tomb was robbed in ancient times but have the original black and yellow paintwork showing ancient Egyptian gods, it said.

One of the ushabti boxes is in excellent condition and was unopened but most of the 38 wooden figurines inside were broken. It belonged to a man by the name of Tut Bashu, who was the original owner of one of the coffins.

Another sarcophagus belonged to someone called Ari Saraa. The statement gave no further details of the dead people but said the burials dated from the Ramesside period or the Late Dynastic Period — anywhere between about 1300 and 330 BC.

 

Reporters fined for defying gag on murder trial

An Egyptian court fined five journalists 10,000 Egyptian pounds (1,800 dollars) each on Thursday for defying a gag order in the murder trial of a tycoon, the state-run news agency MENA reported.A Cairo court had imposed a blackout in November on the trial of Hisham Taalat Mustafa, a stalwart of the ruling National Democratic Party, who is accused of ordering a former policeman to kill Lebanese singer Suzanne Tamim.

Tamim was found with her throat cut in her Dubai apartment last July. The former policeman is also standing trial on murder charges.

The journalists who were fined included Abbas el-Tarabili, editor of the opposition newspaper Al-Wafd, and Magdy el-Jalad, editor of the independent daily Al-Masri al-Yom.

After the gag order, media were allowed to only report court decisions such as adjournment of hearings or the verdict in the trial, which is continuing.

Hamas, Fatah delegations meet in Cairo

Delegations of rival Palestinian groups of Hamas and Fatah met in Cairo last night in the first such high-level meeting in months, paving the way for reconciliation talks that will kick off on Thursday, Palestinian sources said on Wednesday.Two more meetings are scheduled to take place this evening and early Thursday “to cool the atmosphere and relieve the tension between the two movements,” the sources said.

Egypt is hosting the inter-Palestinian dialogue where all the factions are going to participate, intending at reconciling Hamas and Fatah and ending the political split between the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and the Fatah-ruled West Bank.

The two factions were able to overcome obstacles that rose in the last moment, especially the resumption of media incitement and the accusations of arresting political opponents in Gaza Strip and West Bank.

“There were some sides in Hamas and Fatah who don’t prefer the national reconciliation and that’s why we are meeting now,” said Nabil Shaath, a member of Fatah delegation to the talks.

In addition to Shaath, senior Fatah leaders joined the delegation to the talks, including the head of Fatah parliamentary bloc Azzam al-Ahmad and the chief Palestinian peace negotiator Ahmed Qurei, who heads the delegation.

Hamas also participates in the dialogue with team of senior leaders, headed by the deputy of its politburo chief Moussa Abu Marzouq and Mahmoud Zahar, Hamas’ strong-man who is based in Gaza Strip.

According to Shaath, five committees would be formed to settle the differences between Hamas and Fatah, including the formation of a unity government, holding general elections, reforming security services, reforming the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and achieving internal reconciliation.

A sixth committee would be formed by Egypt and the Arab League (AL) and would work only if the dialogue was moving forward hardly, according to Shaath.

 

Bomb unlikely to signal militancy resurgence

A bombing that killed a French teenager near a tourist bazaar in Cairo was an unsophisticated attack that is unlikely to signal a wide resurgence of Islamist militancy in Egypt. No group has taken responsibility for Sunday’s bombing, which also wounded 24 people and was the first deadly attack on tourists in Egypt since 2006.But political analysts say they suspect the attack was the work of Egyptians with Islamist sentiments and not a militant group with global reach such as al Qaeda.

“This is the kind of freelance jihad type of operation where people have been radicalised but not necessarily directly through membership in a group,” said Issandr El-Amrani, Egypt and North Africa analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank.

The attack lacked the sophistication of bomb blasts which killed more than 100 people at tourist resorts in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula between 2004 and 2006. The government blamed those on bedouin with Islamist beliefs.

Cabinet spokesman Magdy Rady said the bomb was “very primitive”, and a second device failed to explode. It was too early to cast blame, he said.

Bomb and gun attacks that have hit Cairo sporadically over the years have often been linked to Nile Valley militants. But the largest two such Islamist militant groups in Egypt halted attacks after the killing of dozens of foreign tourists at a pharaonic temple in Luxor in 1997 caused a public outcry.

“I think they are Islamists, Islamist beginners,” said Egyptian political analyst Diaa Rashwan. “We are not facing a kind of organised terrorism… We have instead something inspired, perhaps, from the Internet.”

A suicide attack killed three foreign tourists in the same area in 2005, and Rashwan said that attack could have been a precursor to Sunday’s bombing.

Egypt’s Al-Ahram newspaper said the bombing was probably committed by three or four people.

 

ANGER OVER GAZA

Political analysts say there is no shortage of issues to motivate people hostile to the Egyptian government, from Cairo’s tight relationship with Washington to tough economic times and Egypt’s enforcement of an Israeli blockade of Gaza.

Al Qaeda often condemns Egypt’s government as a corrupt U.S. puppet and calls for its overthrow. Its Egyptian deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, said last year the Egyptian government was among those imposed by a “Crusader-Zionist campaign”.

Egypt’s Gaza policy has caused public outrage over its unwillingness to open the closed Gaza border for ordinary Palestinians during or after an Israeli offensive that ended on Jan. 18.

“I think the political environment is one dominated by the recent events in Gaza and the stand of the Egyptian government during that time,” said Walid Kazziha, a political science professor at the American University in Cairo.

He said Islamists were not the only possible culprits, and some leftists were also furious over Gaza.

“I would imagine if such a small group is not eliminated very quickly, it could act again,” he said.

The response of Egypt’s security forces is often heavy handed after such attacks. At least 11 people have been detained for questioning.

But experts say even the most effective security could not fully prevent attacks, and that Egypt is not immune to the kind of militant violence seen elsewhere in the region.

“There is no serious political opening. At the same time, also certain aspects of the foreign policy of the regime are not very popular,” said Mustapha al-Sayyed, a Cairo University political science professor.

He said the harsh economic climate did not help.

“I would not be surprised if this kind of act continues. I think it will continue as sporadic acts,” he said.

French teen killed by bomb was on class trip

The French teenagers had finished a day touring Cairo’s 650-year-old Khan el-Khalili bazaar, gathering in its main square to board a bus back to their hotel. Then the blast went off.The explosion killed a 17-year-old girl with the group and wounded 24 other people, most of them fellow students. According to the government account released Monday, a bomb had been planted underneath a stone bench on which the girl was sitting.

The Sunday night blast was the first attack in three years targeting foreigners in Egypt, and it raised fears of a blow to the country’s vital tourism industry, which is already suffering from the global economic downturn.

The attack shocked the Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret, hometown of the more than 40 high school students who were on a tour of Egypt. “We are faced with a dreadful drama,” the suburb’s mayor Patrick Balkany told France’s RTL radio on Monday.

The teens had spent the day wandering Khan el-Khalili’s labyrinth of narrow alleys. The market is usually packed with tourists and Egyptians who buy trinkets from shops selling everything from belly dance outfits to pharaonic statues, or drink tea and smoke waterpipes at the numerous cafes.

At 6:45 p.m., the students gathered in the square in front of one of Cairo’s most revered shrines, the Hussein mosque, one of the students told The Associated Press.

“That was the last thing, that was our meeting point,” she said, speaking outside the hotel, her right leg bandaged from her thigh to her toe because of shrapnel wounds.

The bandage was stained by blood around the ankle and the tall, blond hopped on her good foot to get around. She declined to give her name or age to avoid publicity.

Pressed for details about the bombing, she said, “I have no idea, there was nothing but a boom and a light. I couldn’t see anything.”

The attack left blood splattered on the marble paving stones in front of the mosque. Government spokesman Magdy Radi said a second bomb was found soon after under a nearby bench and defused.

The wounded included 17 French, three Egyptians, three Saudis and a German tourist, Radi said, according to the state news agency MENA. At least 13 of the French students were injured, most of them lightly by shrapnel and flying glass. But three remained in intensive care in an Egyptian hospital Monday.

The rest of the French students returned home Monday, some of them suffering psychological shock from the “horror” of the experience, Balkany said.

Three people were detained for questioning in the attack, security officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. Several experts on Islamic militants said the bombing may have been carried out by extremists angry at what some in the Arab world viewed as Egypt’s failure to help Palestinians during Israel’s devastating offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Khalil al-Anani, an expert on Islamic movements at Cairo’s Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said Sunday’s attackers were likely small-scale militants provoked by Gaza. “We are now facing a new type of terrorism, what I call an individual type of terrorism,” he said.

If so, that would make it similar to a 2005 blast in Khan el-Khalili, when an attacker set off a primitive bomb, killing himself, two French citizens and an American. That attack is believed to have been carried out by a small group of militants working alone.

Egypt fought a long war with Islamist militants in the 1990s, culminating in a massacre of more than 50 tourists in Luxor in 1997. The militants were largely defeated, and there have been few attacks since. But from 2004 to 2006, a string of bombings in Sharm el-Sheik and other resorts in the Sinai Peninsula killed 120 people.

Many Egyptians working in Khan el-Khalili said they fear foreigners will now avoid the bazaar.

“Everyone is worried - about their work, about their lives and about their children,” Amr Talaat, a cafe waiter. “The success of our business is up to God.”

Tourism proved resilient after the Sinai attacks, growing to $10.8 billion in fiscal 2007-2008. The world economic crisis is of greater concern.

Tourist revenues are expected to drop to $8.7 billion in fiscal year 2008-2009, said Reham El-Desoki, senior economist at the Mideast investment bank Beltone Financial. Even that figure is “ambitious,” she said.

Tourists seemed to be taking Sunday’s bombing in stride, voicing some worries, but also a jaded pragmatism in a post-Sept. 11 world.

“One gets a little afraid and angry … but we knew this could happen,” Jens Mueller, a German tourist visiting the bazaar said Monday. “After the war in Gaza, we were rethinking our trip to Cairo at this time, but then decided to go.”

 

Three arrested over deadly bazaar bombing

Egyptian police said on Monday they have arrested three suspects over a bomb attack at a famed Cairo bazaar that killed a French teenager and wounded 25 people, most of them tourists.Sunday’s attack was the first deadly violence since 2006 against Westerners in Egypt, where tourism is a key foreign currency earner, but there has been no claim of responsibility.

The bomb blast ripped through a street lined with cafes and restaurants in Khan al-Khalili, a market dating back to the 14th century that is one of the Egyptian capital’s main tourist attractions.

“Three people there were arrested on the site as suspects after the attack,” a police official said on Monday. “Others are being questioned as witnesses.”

The dead 17-year-old French girl was part of a tour group of 54 teenagers from the Paris region who were on a trip to buy souvenirs in the market before heading home on Monday.

“There was a very powerful explosion. Then screams and blood. We all started running,” said Romy Janiw, 28, one of the seven adults accompanying the teenagers.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed “deep sorrow” over the attack, while Prime Minister Francois Fillon said his government “strongly condemns this criminal act whose blind violence shows its absurdity.”

It was the first deadly attack on tourists in Cairo since a bombing in the same neighbourhood killed two tourists and wounded 18 in 2005.

A series of bombings killed scores of people in Red Sea resorts on the Sinai peninsula from 2004 to 2006 that were blamed on militants loyal to Al-Qaeda.

Sunday’s attack took place outside a hotel across the square from the Hussein mosque, one of Egypt’s oldest places of worship.

It wounded 17 French tourists, including one seriously, as well as a 37-year-old German, three Saudis and four Egyptians, officials said.

Mohammed Ismail, who worked in a nearby cafe and was lightly wounded in the attack, said he was watching a football game in a cafe and had stepped out onto the street before the bomb exploded.

“I didn’t see the bomb,” he told AFP after leaving hospital. “The force of the blast threw me. All I could see was grey smoke. Then I fell unconscious.”

Witnesses said the force of the explosion shook the surrounding buildings. “The building shook and the books fell of the shelf,” said a woman who worked in a store that sold Korans.

But early Monday, shops and restaurants around the Hussein mosque square had reopened for business and customers began trickling in.

There were conflicting accounts about how the attack was carried out.

Witnesses and a police official told AFP two rudimentary bombs were thrown from a rooftop overlooking the street. The second device failed to detonate and was blown up in a controlled explosion, a police source said.

A Western diplomat who accompanied the wounded to hospital said they told police investigators that the bombs had been hurled at them from a rooftop.

But Amin Rady, a member of the Egyptian parliament national security committee, told AFP that police suspected that a “primitive” bomb had been placed under a concrete bench, which was shattered by the explosion.

The head of Cairo’s Al-Azhar University — Sunni Islam’s highest religious authority — condemned the bombing.

“Those who carried out this criminal act are traitors to their own religion and their nation, and they are distorting the image of Islam which rejects terrorism and bans the killing of innocents,” Sheikh Mohammed Sayyed al-Tantawi said.

Regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia, whose nationals were among the injured, “strongly condemned” the attack, the official SPA news agency reported.

Egypt was struck by a spate of deadly attack on Western tourists by Islamic militant groups in the 1990s that dealt a savage blow to the vital tourism sector.

Last year, 13 million tourists visited Egypt, earning 11 billion dollars in revenue. The industry also employs 12.6 percent of the workforce.

Christians In Jail For Violating Ramadan

Six Christian brothers who refused to close their cafe during the Muslim month of fasting, Ramadan, were behind bars in Egypt Saturday, February 21, after they were sentenced to three years in prison with hard labor, a rights group confirmed.United Copts of Great Britain, which represents Coptic Christians, said Ashraf Morris Ghatas, Magdy Morris Ghatas, Osama Morris Ghatas, Nabil Morris Ghatas, Walid Morris Ghatas and Hany Morris Ghatas were detained January 22 on charges of “resisting arrest” and “assaulting” authorities.”

However the group said they only resisted an “unprovoked” police raid last September in Port Sa’id, a city in Egypt’s Nile delta, “motivated by religious zeal on the side of the Muslim members” of the Egyptian police force.

Video footage seen by BosNewsLife shows about a dozen police raiding the cafe and apparently attacking people. Soon after broken tables and chairs can be seen.

Police also smashed glasses and hookah pipes, and beat the brothers with sticks, leaving two with broken arms and a third needing 11 stitches for a head wound, said to the Coptic Christians’ lawyer Ramses el-Nagar in published remarks.
VIDEO SHOWN

“During the trial, the video tape of the attack was shown in court by the defense attorney but, obviously, the judges belong to the same category of the prejudiced police,” added United Copts of Great Britain.

“This is just another evidence that the Egyptian authorities, not just the barbaric mobs, practice discrimination against the Copts.” The group said the case underscores “systematic persecution” in Egypt and that Muslim “radicals have infiltrated the government agencies including police and judiciary.”

However Egyptian officials have said the Christian can appeal the sentence within 30 days. The deadline was believed to be Sunday, February 22.

Before the latest sentence, the Christian brothers already spent one month in jail following their September 8 arrest. At that time, they were released on bail, set at 12,000 Egyptian pounds, nearly $2,200.

However this time Judge Mohammed Hassan El-Mahmody made clear they would remain
behind bars, unless his ruling is overturned. “They were taken immediately to start serving their [three year] sentences, United Copts of Britain said.

SENTENCE OVERTURNED?

Rights groups still hope that the sentence will eventually be overturned, saying there are no clear laws banning business during Ramadan. There have also been signs Egypt’s government has come under American pressure to improve its perceived poor human rights record.

Last week an Egyptian political dissident whose imprisonment had strained relations between Cairo and Washington for more than three years was unexpectedly freed, in an apparent goodwill gesture toward the new Obama administration.

Ayman Nour, who ran against President Hosni Mubarak in 2005 and was later jailed on widely criticized forgery charges, was driven home from Cairo’s Tora Prison. “Why they did this is unknown,” Nour told reporters. “I am coming out with an open heart and am ready to work and nothing has changed. A lot of things have been put on hold over the past years.”

Nour’s release came amid talk that U.S. secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is likely to visit Egypt for a donor’s conference on the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. Nour had reached out to Obama during the U.S. presidential campaign. In August, he reportedly wrote President Barack Obama from prison, asking that Washington push for a Middle East that “embodies the dreams of Arab reformers for democracy and change.”

Egypt receives nearly $2 billion annually in U.S. military and economic aid, according
to estimates.

Egypt’s Critics Have a Voice, but Never the Last Word

In Egypt, there is relative freedom to complain about and criticize the government, even the feared security services. Egypt is not Syria in that way, or Saudi Arabia, where public criticism aimed at the state is often dealt with harshly.  But that is where freedom stops. Read more

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