1 - 7 February 2001
Issue No.519
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 1 - 7 February 2001 Issue No.519 |
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By his own hand?
The relationship between the late President Gamal Abdel-Nasser and his first vice-president, Field Marshal Abdel-Hakim Amer, comes under scrutiny in a projected film by script writer Mamdouh El-Leithi. The President and the Field Marshal focuses on the principal events between 1961, when the Egypt-Syria union collapsed, and 1967, when the Arabs were defeated in the war against Israel. It attempts to shed light on the roles both Nasser and Amer played in these events.
The script makes a first attempt to tackle the thorny issue of Amer's death, and reviews the two versions of how it happened. The official version is that Amer committed suicide following the defeat. The other version is that the field marshal was poisoned by Nasser's henchmen after their friendship turned sour.
From the initial stages of the project, even before the script was completed, El-Leithi ran into difficulties. Last November, the script was rejected by the censorship department for audio-visual products on the grounds that the subject was sensitive and the script did not offer conclusive evidence as to whether Amer was killed or committed suicide.
El-Leithi contested the decision before a committee of appeals established by the minister of culture. The committee annulled the decision on condition that El-Leithi secures the approval of both the general and military intelligence services. The writer was also asked to delete anything that might tarnish the image of the armed forces. "And the script in its final shape should be re-submitted to the censorship department for a final decision," the committee concluded.
El-Leithi told Al-Ahram Weekly that he would abide by the committee's instructions. "The necessary amendments will be made very soon," he said.
The script will be completed as soon as El-Leithi receives the necessary documents from the presidency of the republic and the armed forces. "These documents include minutes of meetings held at the presidency and the armed forces command in 1967," he said.
Apart from his problems with the censor's department, El-Leithi has been subject to severe criticism from the field marshal's second wife, retired actress Berlanti Abdel-Hamid. She said the script lacked accuracy because it was based on unreliable sources and documents. "Instead of talking to Amer's family, El-Leithi depended on the accounts of people who do not know much about the field marshal," Abdel-Hamid told Al-Ahram Weekly.
"In addressing the issue of Amer's death, at the request of the prosecutor-general who re-opened the dossier of the case in the 1970s, El-Leithi did not refer to a report prepared by Dr Mohamed Diab, a toxicologist with the National Research Centre. This report reached the conclusion that the field marshal was poisoned."
Abdel-Hamid said the script seemed to give weight and credibility to the version that claimed the field marshal committed suicide, attributing this finding to Amer's family without referring to documents which backed it.
"[A work on the subject] cannot deal with the truth as long as the state insists on hiding the relevant official documents, including the report of the general prosecutor at the time, from which several paragraphs were deleted and others added on Nasser's orders," Abdel-Hamid said.
In response, El-Leithi asserted that he had used reliable sources and authentic military documents. "I dealt with the two versions on an equal footing without taking sides," he said. "We'll leave it to the viewer to decide which version is more credible."
El-Leithi, who will produce the film, said the estimated cost of production would reach nearly LE15 million. Top actors Nur El-Sherif and Ahmed Zaki will play Nasser and Amer. The director remains to be chosen.
El-Leithi has written several film scripts based on novels by prominent writers, including Naguib Mahfouz's El-Karnak and Miramar.
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