Free Republic

Throughout the Middle East, reformers have been driven away by autocratic rulers. We Westerners are desperate to see the political systems in the Middle East evolve from authoritarian theocratic or oligarchical models to some variation of representative government. That desire suffered another setback on Saturday when former Egyptian presidential candidate Ayman Nour, 41, was sentenced to five years in prison for (what outside observers insist are trumped-up charges of) forgery. Up and down the region - Syria, Iran, Iraq, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority - the Western pluralist model of representative democracy has failed because broadminded, Western-oriented reformers have been...

ASHINGTON, June 7— A re-examination of years of terrorist plots and attacks around the world, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, suggests that American intelligence agencies profoundly underestimated Al Qaeda's reach and aspirations for more than a decade as it grew from obscurity into a global terrorist threat, lawmakers and investigators said this week.As Congressional investigators look back far beyond the series of signals missed before the Sept. 11 attacks, they are seeking answers to many questions about Al Qaeda that law enforcement and intelligence agencies still cannot answer themselves, officials said.In particular, they said, Congressional investigators are trying...

Israel marked the 30th anniversary of its historic peace treaty with Egypt on Wednesday, with both sides acknowledging that its goals have yet to be fulfilled. At a conference in Jerusalem, Egyptian ambassador Yasser Reda indicated the agreement has not been able to bring about comprehensive peace in the region. He said the Palestinian issue is still at the center of the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Also commenting on the anniversary, the Israeli ambassador to Egypt, Shalom Cohen, lamented that peace at the official level has not filtered down to the Egyptian people. The relationship has come...

Egypt Shuts Iranian TV Station Office in Cairo July 24, 2008 Reuters Cynthia Johnston CAIRO -- Egypt, irritated with Iran over a film on the assassination of President Anwar Sadat, shut down the Cairo offices of an Iranian television station that it said was not properly licensed, security sources said on Thursday. The sources said police closed the offices of Iran's state-owned Arabic Al-Alam television on Tuesday because it did not have a broadcasting licence, and confiscated computers and photo equipment. They gave no further explanation for the move. But the closure came weeks after Egypt summoned the head of...

Egypt summoned a senior Iranian diplomat in Cairo on Monday over an Iranian film on the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, an Egyptian Foreign Ministry official and state media said. Egypt's state news agency MENA said Cairo called in the head of the Iranian interests office in Cairo over the film, which upset Egyptian sensibilities. But MENA gave few details of the film's content. Mainly Sunni Muslim Egypt and Shi'ite Iran have not had full diplomatic relations since Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, when Iran cut ties after Sadat hosted the deposed pro-Western Shah in Cairo. Iran said in January...

At the end of a rare visit to Egypt, a senior Iranian envoy said Tuesday the two regional Muslim heavyweights are making progress in normalizing diplomatic relations, cut nearly three decades ago over regional policy disagreements. "There is no major problem and everything is moving forward," Ali Larijani, from Iran's powerful National Security Council, said after talks here with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit. Larijani, who is also a close aide to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, described the talks as "positive and constructive." Teheran cut diplomatic ties after Cairo signed a peace agreement with Israel in 1979...

CAIRO, Egypt - Egypt's top civilian court on Saturday overruled an order to release a leading Islamic militant who spent more than 20 years behind bars in connection to the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. The court also referred to a security court the case of another man who is the alleged leader of Egypt's Islamic Jihad and was also convicted in Sadat's assassination. Tarek el-Zomor, 47, was ordered released in July 2005, but he was never set free because of an Interior Ministry discretion to hold a prisoner for up to five more years on security grounds. El-Zomor was...

PESHAWAR, Aug 18: A son-in-law of Al Qaeda No 2 Dr Ayman Al-Zawahiri is believed to be the mastermind of the plot to blow up transatlantic flights and he met one or some of the plotters at a place close to the Pakistan-Afghan border, credible sources told Dawn. “The mastermind in the planes bombing plot is Zawahiri’s son-in-law,” said the sources who did not want to be named. “He is the guy being looked for,” they added. Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenant is known to have several sons-in-law. One of them was reported to have been killed in a...

Twenty-five years ago, at 12:40 p.m. on October 6, 1981, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, aged 63, was mortally wounded as he reviewed a military parade commemorating Egypt's "victory" over Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. His attackers, Muslim fundamentalists, tossed two hand grenades and directed automatic weapons fire into the reviewing stand. Sadat's deputy, Hosni Mubarak, was nearby but escaped unscathed. I can't recall where I was that Tuesday in October. Maybe in my office in the shadow of the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan. Perhaps at NYU, where I was a graduate student. What particularly fascinates is...

This is a WorldNetDaily printer-friendly version of the article which follows. To view this item online, visit http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=48639 Friday, February 3, 2006 Sadat gave daughter in marriage at 12Camelia tells how top officials conspired to falsify her age Posted: February 3, 20061:00 a.m. Eastern © 2006 WorldNetDaily.com A daughter of late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat said in a recent television interview her father used his power to give her away in marriage illegally at the age of 12 to a man who later abused her. Camelia Sadat told Dream 2 TV in Egypt that the president at that time, Gamal Abd...

CAIRO (AFP) - Egyptian MP Talaat Sadat, whose uncle became the first Arab leader to make peace with Israel, called for a boycott of all mail coming from the Jewish state in protest against a stamp deemed offensive to Islam. The independent daily Nahdet Masr on Saturday carried a letter signed by Sadat and three other lawmakers urging the Egyptian government to file a request for Israel to withdraw the "infidel" stamp. In the mouthpiece of Sadat's Ahrar party, the MPs explained that the stamp depicted a muezzin calling for prayer from the top of his minaret like a pop...

PARIS, 8 Oct. (IPS) Iran reacted with a quasi indifference, if not anger, at the nomination of the United Nations International nuclear watchdog and it’s General Director as the winner of the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize for 2005. The Egyptian diplomat Mohamed ElBarade’i and his International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) won the award on Friday, strengthening him and his Vienna-based organisation in efforts of diplomacy rather than confrontation to settle complicated problems concerning nuclear non proliferation. “The West has awarded Mohammad ElBaradade’i and his Agency for the good services he has offered it by taking the Iranian nuclear issue as...

When American bombs were raining down on what is left of Afghanistan, fellow Muslims in the neighbouring Islamic republic of Iran took out to the Streets. Contrary to our expectations in the West, they did not rally to denounce the 'Great Satan' - the name given to America by the late Ayatollah Khomeini. Instead, ordinary Iranians, in one of the most extraordinary shifts in the geopolitical landscape since September 11, challenged their own hard-line Islamic clerics who swept Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi from power in 1979. Tens of thousands of men and women also demonstrated, in several cities, after World...

Last Sunday's events in the heart of Cairo served as a tragic reminder of what Egyptians already know so well - that their country, despite recent protestations to the contrary, remains stubbornly authoritarian. The Egyptian regime from the early 1950s until this very day has pegged its survival on its uncanny ability to create a stifling culture of fear and paranoia. And so it was on Sunday. The government of President Hosni Mubarak, in the face of a small but unprecedented Muslim Brotherhood protest calling for constitutional reforms, brought in thousands of troops and blocked off all the major thoroughfares...

I know that I'm little bit late in posting this thing-they've already finished the first segment-but I've always abided by the motto: "Better late, then never."Farah Pahlavi is discussing her husband, her recently published book (An Enduring Love), and the future of Iran.

CAIRO, Egypt -- A claim of responsibility for the downing of two Russian planes appeared on a Web site known for militant Muslim comment Friday. The statement, which accused Russians of killing Muslims in Chechnya, was signed "the Islambouli Brigades." A group with a similar name has claimed at least one previous attack, but the legitimacy of the group and the authenticity of such statements could not be verified. Russian officials have said terrorism was the most likely cause of Tuesday's plane crashes, which killed 89 people. "We in the Islambouli Brigades announce that our holy warriors managed to hijack...

Sadat: People will see U.S. effort in Iraq is mostly good Matt Mckinney, Star Tribune May 19, 2004SADAT0519 The former First Lady of Egypt, Jehan Sadat, said in an interview recently that she remains hopeful about the situation in the Middle East despite growing animosity toward America following revelations that U.S. soldiers tortured and humiliated Iraqi prisoners. The anger will pass, she said, because people will see that the American effort to rebuild Iraq is mostly good. "There are very few Americans who make this mistake," she said, referring to soldiers who abused the detainees. "The majority of the people...

Twenty-five years ago, the leaders of Israel and Egypt – Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat – signed a treaty that ended decades of warfare. The treaty and its implementation are far from perfect, but the framework of peace has been preserved despite differences between Cairo and Jerusalem. Advertisement In the intervening decades, a great deal has been written about this singular accomplishment. Unfortunately, some of these accounts are misleading or based on myths. As a result, the "Camp David formula," to which former president Jimmy Carter attributes the success of the negotiations, is often seen as the key to a...

George Woodrow Carter Posted: November 12, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc. Reading President Bush's address to the National Endowment for Democracy, one wonders: Have the neocons captured him totally? For, though he is being hailed as Reagan's true heir, Bush has begun to sound like a clone of Woodrow Wilson or Jimmy Carter. Foreign policy is, in Walter Lippman's phrase, the "Shield of the Republic." Its purpose: protect our independence and freedom. "We do not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy," said John Quincy Adams. Traditional conservatives believe in the Eisenhower formula of Peace...

Security Sources: Egypt Frees 900 Muslim Militants CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt released 900 members of an Islamic militant group that killed 58 tourists in 1997 and helped plot the murder of president Anwar Sadat, security sources said on Tuesday. Analysts said that freeing so many members of the outlawed al-Gama'a al-Islamiya (Islamic Group), whose jailed leaders renounced violence six years ago, would help the movement gain a political voice and could strengthen the hand of more moderate Islamists in the Arab world's most populous country. News of the mass release came two days after Egypt announced it had freed Karam...